


Hello To The Night

by gaelicspirit



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Brotherhood, Concussions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss, Team as Family, impacts of experimental drugs, questionable medical research, unapologetic wish fulfillment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 42,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25640428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaelicspirit/pseuds/gaelicspirit
Summary: Around S4 episodes 9 and 10. Turns out emotional trauma + concussions + experimental drugs don’t mix quite as easily as one might think. Mac’s dark side does more than toss him a creepy grin from the other side of a window when getting “lost in his head” is taken up a notch. And the only thing that is going to save him is the team coming together as a family-thewholeteam.
Comments: 76
Kudos: 89





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer/Warning:** Nothing you recognize is mine. Also, I’ve taken some liberties with how events technically transpired in the episodes. Call it…artistic license. Story title from Lou Gramm’s song “Lost in the Shadows (The Lost Boys’ theme)” because I am a child of the ‘80s. Also? I tend to write long chapters…and this story is no exception. Grab a cuppa and settle in.
> 
>  _One more thing:_ I’m not classifying this as AU, but…that’s basically what it is by then end. You’ll see what I mean. I just want things to be different when it comes to Jack Dalton, so…I’m writing it into existence.
> 
>  **Author’s Note:** I’ve been trying to write something for a while now without much success. Apparently, a global pandemic coupled with my country finally waking up to the systemic injustice and racism that is pervasive throughout our culture, society, and government is a bit distracting. But…writing is the one way I can uncoil, so I gave it a go with this story. It’s nothing special—more a way to stretch a bit, really. But I do hope you enjoy. 
> 
> Sincere thanks to my friend **pandi19** (waitingforthestarstofall on tumblr) for giving this a sanity check for me—and for ongoing .gif inspirations throughout the creation process. And to the indomitable **IceQueen1** (disappearinginq on tumblr) who continues to find new and interesting ways to help my muse push me along.

_Put a fence in front of these men…and they’ll climb it._

The Great Escape

* * *

**_Bozer_ **

**_**_ **

The first two rings didn’t register.

Or he ignored them. It was hard to say.

Since re-joining the Phoenix, he’d had more than a few days that twisted him up and turned him sideways. This one, though…this one left the rest behind.

And he’d never even left the lab.

“’llo?” he mumbled, fumbling for his phone, and squinting at the brilliant screen in his peacefully dark room.

_“Bozer—Mac’s gone.”_

He blinked, pushing up on one elbow and pulling the phone away to check the caller before pressing it back to his ear.

“Desi?”

_“I woke up and he wasn’t in bed and I’ve looked everywhere in the house because sometimes he, like, I don’t know…hides or whatever and I can’t—”_

“Whoa, whoa, hang on.” Bozer cleared his throat, pushing fully upright and squinting at the clock next to his bed. 12:17am. Very, very a.m. “Take a beat. Maybe he’s just out on the deck.”

 _“You think I didn’t look there first?”_ Desi snapped, and Bozer felt himself draw up to attention. The girl was pissed. _“Something is wrong—he was acting really off earlier this evening, too, and after that drug—”_

“What do you mean, ‘off’?” Bozer swung his legs over the side of his bed, still-crisp sheets rustling with his movement, and switched on the lamp situated on his nightstand. “’Off’ how?”

_“Restless, anxious—he said he was just tired, but…he was all…jittery. Like he wanted to crawl out of his skin.”_

Bozer stood and began casting around his room to find his discarded clothes from the night before.

 _“I didn’t get to see him after he woke up from that chỉ trích drug Matty convinced him to take,”_ Desi continued.

He could hear her pacing through the phone, her feet slapping against the wood floor of Mac’s bedroom, and he was pretty sure mixing Vietnamese in her rant was unintentional. He’d seen her angry, but this was a different level—this was fear.

“Okay, look, I know you’re worried, but—”

 _“You’re damn right, I’m worried,”_ she shot back. _“He was hurt and we all just let him…. You were with him the whole time—did he seem okay to you?”_

 _No_ , Bozer’s mind poked at him. No, Mac had _not_ seemed okay in the slightest. Yet they’d all just…let him walk out of there. Told him to get some aspirin for the DMT hangover and rest up. Keep moving forward, just like he always did.

“Mac’s always okay, you know that,” he tried to reassure, the words sounding hollow as they hit the air.

 _“I made him soup,”_ Desi said, the contempt in her voice almost a living thing. _“I could see that he wasn’t…wasn’t_ right _. Wasn’t himself. And all I could do was make him fucking soup.”_

“Hey, take it easy, okay,” Bozer stopped at his bedroom door, shoes in hand. “Look, he’s okay. He’s probably just out on a run or something. He does that sometimes to get his head on straight.”

 _“At midnight?”_ Desi challenged.

“Listen, when he got back from Afghanistan, he’d do random stuff like this all the time,” Bozer informed her. “Scared the shit outta me, but Jack—”

He stopped cold, his voice catching at the base of his throat.

_“Jack…what?”_

“He…he, uh, he said that sometimes Mac just needed the…the sky.” Bozer swallowed, hard. He hadn’t thought about Jack in a long while. He hadn’t _let_ himself think about the older man because it was too hard to think about the fact that he wasn’t there.

 _“The sky,”_ Desi repeated, clearly not tracking.

Bozer leaned against his doorway, pulling his shoes on one at a time while keeping his phone balanced against his shoulder.

“He explained it a lot better, but it was like…I don’t know. The world was too close, or the air was too thin or something. And when stuff got to him—like, did he have a nightmare or something?”

 _“Maybe?”_ Desi’s voice sounded small, young. _Scared_ , he realized. She sounded scared. He didn’t think he’d ever heard her sound this out of her element before. _“I was asleep, but…his pillow was damp, I noticed.”_

“I’m sure he just went for a run or something and didn’t want to bother you,” Bozer tried to infuse as much false confidence as he could into each word. “Where’s Riles?”

 _“I didn’t wake her,”_ Desi confessed. _“Felt…I don’t know.”_

 _Awkward_ , Bozer’s brain supplied. “Go get her, let her know what’s up,” he instructed. “She wasn’t there for the Afghanistan stuff, but she was there for plenty others. She’ll tell you I’m right and he’s fine.”

Desi didn’t reply for a moment and Bozer felt his heart pick up speed, wondering if he’d just taken the wrong path and was now walking through a minefield.

 _“She told me she was worried about him, too,”_ Desi confessed. _“Earlier today. Between Lasky and his dad….”_

“Mac’s tough,” Bozer asserted. “He’s been through a lot, sure, but he’s always come through.”

 _“Maybe that’s the problem,”_ Desi sighed. _“Okay, go. Keep me posted.”_

The second his phone went dead Bozer pocketed it and grabbed his keys, heading for the door of his apartment. He hurried down the outer stairs, his heavy footsteps sending metallic bangs echoing against the quiet of the surrounding buildings, toward the parking stall assigned to him, thoughts tangling together like the paperclips in Mac’s War Room bowl. He slid behind the wheel and forced himself to take a calming breath as he turned the ignition.

Mac was tough—always had been. It was one of the first things Bozer remembered noticing about him when they were kids. Mac faced the world with a look of steeled determination in his eyes. Yet, there was something fragile about him, even as he exuded an uncanny sense of confidence. It made people want to trust him, shield him, and follow him all at once.

_Mac compartmentalizes his feelings better than anyone I know…._

Jack hadn’t been wrong, but it hadn’t been said with pride. It had been said with concern. He’d been _warning_ them.

For all his intelligence, Mac wasn’t great at emotion. And after the events of the last couple of weeks, the emotions had to be stacking up inside him like a self-destructing Jenga tower.

“Hate to say this,” Bozer mumbled to the quiet interior of his car, the glow of the dash his only company in his search, “but I wish you were here right now, Jack.”

Like the rest of them, Bozer had accepted and understood when the older man agreed to take the assignment to find and eliminate Kovacs. What he didn’t understand, and was having trouble accepting, was why the man _stayed_ away. Why the check-ins and periodic ‘proof of life’ texts and emails had ceased right around the same time the Phoenix fell apart and they all scattered to the winds. Matty assured them Jack wasn’t KIA. He was still out there, doing his thing.

But in this moment, Bozer felt the man may as well be dead; his absence was felt just as keenly.

As Bozer drove some of the familiar running routes from Mac’s house, looking for the familiar lanky figure or blond hair reflecting in the periodic street lights, he realized that if Jack _had_ been there, no way would Mac had gone under with that DARPA drug.

No way. Not with as out of sorts as he’d been.

He rolled down the window, breathing in the heady freshness of the night air, clearing his head. Memories clung to him like cobwebs; he dragged a hand down his face, attempting to dismiss them and keep his focus.

Bozer felt a kick in his gut recalling the sight of them wheeling an unconscious Mac to the lab, and not to medical. His best friend had been boneless as Russ helped Bozer transfer him from the litter to the chair, Desi and Riley hovering nearby, worriedly recounting the fight and the clues they’d discovered. Bozer could imagine the fury in Jack’s voice that they hadn’t gotten ‘his boy’ some medical attention before the doctor from DARPA arrived with the experimental drug.

“What were we thinking, man?” Bozer muttered, slapping the flat of his palm on the wheel.

It was a difficult thing, turning the mirror around to face himself. Examining who he’d become over the last two years. Over a year apart from the make-shift family Mac had created around himself had changed Bozer—in many ways, for the better, if he were to be honest. But it had also created callouses. Hardened him toward things that previously would have twisted him up, set him adrift.

Like seeing Mac in pain.

He scanned the latest route—the fifth that he knew as well as the back of his own hand. For all his ability to exist in the moment, use what he had at his disposal, Mac was a creature of habit when it came to himself. He always came last, and when he was part of the equation, it was with as little thought as necessary.

All brain power was pushed outward.

This wasn’t new—this was _Mac_. And with Jack gone, no one knew that better than Bozer.

He pulled over to the shoulder of a quiet road, leaning his forehead on the crown of his steering wheel, breathing slow, thinking. When they’d gathered around Tesla’s weapon in the lab once Russ, Desi, and Riley had returned, Mac had looked…drawn. Beaten, almost.

When Riley had asked him what it was like to get lost in his head, his voice had been quiet. His eyes…secretive.

_“Like a surreal dream…that’s all.”_

Bozer had known then he wasn’t okay, but…he’d let it go. The time apart, the new way the team worked with Russ at the helm, it had changed the way Bozer watched his friend. Changed the way they’d all watched out for each other. It had turned them from a family into a team—allowing each other their secrets where before the poison had been drawn out and dealt with, in the open, burdens shared equally.

Filling his lungs, Bozer sat back and looked out through the windshield at the spilled-ink sky. “Okay, Jack,” he said to the night. “Where would you look, huh? Your Mac Homing Beacon was always turned up to eleven. Where would you go next?”

He didn’t truly expect an answer, but when the brief, brilliant streak of a shooting star illuminated the sky for a second, he barked out a laugh.

When they were kids, one of their favorite places to ride their bikes to—even though it took their short legs an inordinate amount of time to get there and back again—was the Griffith Observatory. Bozer had wanted to reenact scenes from _Rebel Without a Cause_.

Mac? He wanted to look at the sky.

“Thanks, man,” Bozer whispered, turning his car in a tight circle to reverse direction and head to the Observatory.

It was closing in on two in the morning when he pulled into the empty lot of the Observatory. He texted Desi quickly before he parked, checking to make sure Mac hadn’t circled back while he’d been out looking. When she replied that he still wasn’t home, he reassured her that he had a pretty good idea where he was, and that they’d be home, soon.

Parking under a security light, Bozer stepped from the comfortable safety of his car into the chill of the early morning. He shivered once in reaction, zipping up his hoodie and shoving his hands into his pockets.

California nights were the only times he ever felt this kind of cold. This kind of clean. The smell of exhaust and industry was absent from the air, replaced by pine and earth—and for an odd, weightless moment, he imagined he could smell the stars that blanketed the dark sky above him.

He headed toward the large, domed building. Unless Mac was looking to add illegal entry to his record, Bozer was pretty sure he wasn’t actually _inside_ the Observatory. He began to make his way along the walkway until he saw a familiar, slim outline of his best friend.

Mac sat on the edge of a guard fence, legs hooked on the bottom rung, eyes up on the stars. His back was curved forward, elbows resting on his knees, neck arched with his face lifted to the sky. He looked less like a bomb-tech-war-vet-turned-genius-super-spy and more like a lost boy, waiting for someone to find him and take him home.

Bozer made his way carefully forward, keenly aware of the fact that the fence was placed at the edge of a rather steep hill, the drop-off of which would do some pretty serious damage if one fell. Making sure his shoes scuffed the pavement to warn of his approach, he saw Mac shift his shoulders slightly, body moving in recognition of a new sound.

“Hey, Mac,” he said quietly, swinging one leg over the edge of the fence, keeping the other anchored to the solid walkway, and faced his friend.

“Hey,” Mac greeted, eyes still on the stars, sounding almost as if he’d been expecting Bozer to show up.

Another streak of light cut like a white-hot tracer bullet across the darkest part of the sky.

“You out here making wishes on shooting stars?” Bozer asked, tapping the back of his fingers into the palm of his opposite hand.

It caught his attention then that Mac was clad only in a T-shirt and shorts; it almost looked like they were the clothes he’d gone to sleep in, not donned in a planned midnight run.

“These aren’t stars,” Mac corrected him, his voice sounding strangely detached from the moment. “That light is caused by dust and rock falling through the atmosphere and burning up—happens when the Earth passes through a trail of debris left by a comet as it orbits the Sun.”

Bozer felt his mouth tug up in a reflexive grin. “Is that right?”

“My dad gave me my first telescope when I was eight,” Mac continued in the same, oddly modulated tone, as if he were speaking in a dream. “Showed me how to find the constellations, track comets. I took it apart one day and he wouldn’t help me put it back together again. Said I obviously needed to know how it worked, so I should figure it out.”

Bozer remembered that telescope. He remembered James MacGyver’s stern face as Mac worked to rebuild it from the collection of parts scattered around them in piles organized by size and use. He remembered fearing that face.

“I did, too. Figure it out.”

“Yeah, I know, man,” Bozer smiled, watching Mac watch the stars. He frowned a little when he saw a hard shiver chase its way through Mac’s slim frame, though the blond man didn’t seem to notice.

“It’s like they were mine, y’know?”

Bozer’s frown deepened. “What—”

“And for a little bit there, it felt like he gave them to me,” Mac continued as though Bozer hadn’t spoken. “Like the whole universe was mine because he let me see it. But…,” Mac shook his head, his eyes distant as they tracked down from the sky and skimmed the horizon in front of them. “Then he took them away. He took them with him when he left. And I can’t figure out how to get them back. I keep trying, but…they’re just…,” he looked back up at the stars, “they’re so far away.”

Bozer reached out and rested his fingertips on Mac’s bare arm, flinching back a little when he felt how chilled his friend’s skin was. He couldn’t see it before, but with that touch he realized Mac was shivering consistently now.

“Hey, Mac, you okay, man?”

Mac blinked, looking down at Bozer’s fingers on his arm, then frowned. He glanced around him slowly, tracking over to his left until their eyes met.

“Bozer?”

“Yeah?”

“What…what are you doing here?”

Bozer blinked, his eyebrows climbing his forehead. He tightened his grip on Mac, wrapping his fingers around his friend’s forearm until he felt the other man’s shivers through the bones of his hand.

“I was looking for you,” Bozer said truthfully, trying to keep the worry from his voice as he watched Mac look around him, over his shoulder to where the Griffith’s domed building loomed in the shadows, then back across the dark horizon to the lights of Los Angeles. “You decide to go for a midnight run or something?”

Mac swallowed hard, reaching up with a trembling hand to rub at his forehead. Bozer recalled his tired voice claiming his headache had a headache earlier that day—no, last night—in the lab. He dropped his hand and looked around again and Bozer realized what he was seeing was a growing awareness and recognition, and it frightened him.

“What the hell are we doing out here?” Mac asked, his voice sounding thin, baffled.

“Mac,” Bozer gripped his arm tighter. “I found you out here.”

Mac looked at him, blue eyes cloudy with confusion. “What?”

“I _found_ you, man.”

Mac darted his tongue out, wetting dry lips, his shivering increasing until Bozer saw his teeth start to chatter.

“I don’t…I don’t remember…,” he shook his head. “I don’t remember leaving the house.”

Bozer folded his lower lip against his teeth, biting it to keep prisoner whatever noise that wanted to escape. “Well, how ‘bout we head back there now?”

Mac nodded shakily and moved to slide off the fence. Bozer saw in a split second the ground was too far below him for Mac to land safely. He thrust out his arm and braced his friend, swinging his leg back over the fence to the paved walkway and pulling Mac backwards with him. Mac scrambled to find his footing, standing on trembling legs as he gripped Bozer’s shoulders.

“Holy shit,” Mac took a stuttering breath as if he’d forgotten that was what his lungs were supposed to do, straightening slowly. “How the hell did I…?”

Bozer shook his head. “How about we don’t worry about that right now, huh?”

Mac nodded, his eyes still on the drop-off on the other side of the fence.

“C’mon, man,” Bozer turned Mac toward the parking lot, keeping one hand on his friend’s arm, the other on his lower back. “It’s late and I’m cold.” He wasn’t but it was always easier to get Mac to act if he was doing so on behalf of someone else.

“Yeah,” Mac nodded. “Yeah, sure, of course. Boze, I’m—”

“Don’t,” Bozer pushed him gently forward. “Don’t worry about it, man. Yesterday was weird for everybody.”

“Yesterday?” Mac asked, the word tripping out on a faltering breath as his shivers increased.

Bozer pressed his fingertips harder into Mac’s lower back, feeling the corded muscles there tighten against the pressure. “Yeah, y’know…crazy DARPA drug, Tesla weapon….”

“That was _yesterday_?” Mac asked, blinking owlishly at him.

“Time flies when you’re trippin’, man.”

Mac didn’t reply and didn’t resist as Bozer continued to guide him toward the parking lot. He stumbled over his own feet—any coltish grace that once guided him having vacated in the wake of whatever this was. Bozer steadied him, noting that while Mac didn’t quite lean into him, he needed the support.

“Easy, man,” Bozer wrapped an arm around Mac’s slim waist, pulling him flush against his side. “You’re moving like me after a night of whiskey.”

“That…doesn’t sound good,” Mac returned in the same spacey, confused tone. “You make some pretty bad choices ‘cause of whiskey.”

As they reached the car, Bozer shifted his hip to keep Mac propped up, pulling the passenger door open and maneuvering his friend into the seat.

“Yeah, well,” he reached across Mac’s shivering form to fasten his seatbelt, “in whiskey’s defense, I’ve also made some pretty questionable choices completely sober.”

“Let’s crank that heat up, how ‘bout—” Bozer stopped as he glanced over and saw Mac had quite literally passed out, head tilted against the window.

His hands lay lax in his lap, fingers curled toward his palms, the left one twitching in what looked like an attempt to reach out, but not quite getting there.

“Jesus, Mac,” Bozer breathed, turning up the heat anyway as his friend shivered even in his sleep.

He shrugged out of his hoodie, draping it over Mac’s bare arms and t-shirt covered torso. The bruise that had started to stretch across his forehead and around one eye yesterday had darkened, turning an almost blue-black color along his orbital bone and above his eyebrow. It looked painful—had looked painful back in the lab. And still…they’d just let him walk out of there.

Grabbing his phone, Bozer scrolled through his list until he reached Matty’s name.

 _What was in that experimental whatever the hell we gave Mac?_ He texted.

Not waiting for a response, he texted Desi that he found Mac and they were on their way back. Throwing the car into gear, he headed back toward Mac’s place, casting worried glances to his right the whole drive as Mac flinched and murmured, not unlike he had when lying in that chair in the lab, hooked up to electrodes, trapped inside his own mind.

He pulled up in front of the house and turned off the engine, reaching over to try to gently wake Mac up. No sooner had his hand touched Mac’s shoulder than the other man shot forward with a great gasp of air.

Bozer flinched back, startled. “Mac?”

One hand outstretched, the hoodie puddling in his lap, Mac touched the dash with trembling fingers.

“You with me, man?”

Mac looked over at him. “Boze?”

“Hey, there you are,” Bozer gave him what he hoped was a natural smile. “Have a good nap?”

Mac turned to glance out the side window. “We’re at my place.”

“Yep,” Bozer nodded.

“Son of a bitch,” Mac practically groaned, rubbing his face. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

“You’re just tired, man,” Bozer offered, clapping him gently on the shoulder. “Need to get some solid shut-eye.”

Mac nodded, dropping his hands. “Yeah…yeah, maybe you’re right.”

“’Course I am,” he replied confidently, shoving away the memory of Cheryl Warner’s voice huffing _It’s so not safe_ when asked about the efficacy of the drug they injected into Mac.

He climbed out of the car and hurried around to the other side, helping Mac to his feet, and ignoring the alarm bells deafening him when Mac leaned against him as they made their way into the house. Desi rushed to greet them at the door, breathing Mac’s name with obvious relief. Bozer stepped back as Desi hugged Mac, watching as Mac’s arms wrapped around her with hesitant confusion, clearly uncertain as to how he’d left her side when the last thing he clearly remembered was being in bed with her.

Riley shot Bozer a worried look.

“He’s okay,” Bozer said, resting his hand on Mac’s back once more. “Just cold and tired. Needs some good sleep, right, Mac?”

Mac nodded, but didn’t say anything, letting Desi take his hand and lead him back to his room. Bozer stayed in the entry way next to Riley. The minute the others were out of earshot, Riley shoved his shoulder gently.

“What the hell, Boze?”

Bozer shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t know, Ri,” he confessed, letting the strange, scary evening wash over him in that moment with her reassuring presence next to him. “He is _not_ okay.”

“Where was he?”

“Sitting on a fence out at the Griffith Observatory,” Bozer told her, both looking over toward Mac’s room as Desi stepped out, closing the door behind her.

“He barely made it to the bed before he passed out,” she reported, her words slung at them like tiny darts. “What the _hell_ is going on with him?”

Bozer stared at her, brows pulled close across the bridge of his nose. “Are you kidding me? What’s _not_ going on with him? You guys bring him back to the lab unconscious and barely an hour after he wakes up, we’re shooting him up with some voodoo drug that messes with his memory!”

He hadn’t meant to sound quite so angry, but his tone pulled Desi up short. She shoved anxious fingers through her sleep-disheveled hair.

“Yeah, okay,” she nodded, backing down a bit. “You’re right.”

“We gotta keep an eye on him,” Riley declared. “At least until whatever’s in his system works its way out.”

“When’s that gonna be?” Desi asked.

Bozer’s phone pinged, startling all three of them. He pulled it out and looked at the message from Matty.

“Classified, my ass,” he growled, typing back, _Unclassify it then because our boy’s not okay_.

“Did he even get checked out for the concussion?” Riley asked. “He hit that wall _really_ hard in the Tesla house.”

“What do you think?” Desi snapped, her worry shedding on them.

At one time, her inability to compartmentalize had intimidated Bozer—irritated him, even. But now he saw it as evidence of just how much she cared about Mac. And anyone who cared about Mac was aces in his book…so he let it go.

“I tell you what, I wish Jack was here,” Bozer found himself confessing.

Desi’s head whipped around to stare at him with something close to fear while Riley sighed, crossed her arms, and nodded.

“He’d have never let Mac take that drug in the first place,” Riley echoed Bozer’s thoughts. “And he’d kick our asses for not forcing him to get checked out.”

“He was always the best at watching out for Mac,” Bozer sighed, not realizing what he’d said until Desi turned to walk into the kitchen. He met Riley’s eyes, then dropped his head back, turning to the other woman. “Desi, I didn’t mean—”

“No, you’re right,” Desi cut him off. “Ever since Mac and I got together, my…objectivity has been skewed. I haven’t watched his back—not like I was supposed to. I can’t.”

“It’s…hard to not be drawn to him,” Riley offered, hitching one hip on a stool tucked up against the bar in the kitchen. “He’s got that confidence about him…makes you believe no matter what, as long as he’s around, nothing bad is going to happen to you.”

“But then…who’s watching to make sure nothing bad happens to _him_?” Bozer asked softly, leaning against the counter opposite Riley.

“Me,” Desi replied. “Or…at least it was supposed to be me. But then…everything….”

“Went sideways,” Riley supplied. They sat for a moment in silence until Riley took a deep breath. “Well, we can all watch out for him,” she said, “so he can watch out for everyone else.”

“Or, we could call Jack,” Bozer suggested.

Riley looked at him and for a moment his heart clenched at the hope he saw swimming in her dark eyes.

“Do you even know where he is? How to reach him?” Riley asked.

Bozer shook his head, “No, but you better believe Matty does. And I’m not afraid to find out.”

“No,” Desi broke in, the word falling between them like an anvil. “Not yet. I…I need more time.” She looked at them, her expression young and oddly desperate. “We just started to get back onto some kind of…of level playing field. I need him to trust me. Open up to me. If…if we’re ever going to be anything…real.”

Riley looked down at her hands and Bozer glanced between them.

“And you can’t do that with Jack here?” he asked.

Desi shook her head. “I can’t have Jack knowing I let him down—let Mac down. I couldn’t handle that.”

“You didn’t let anyone down,” Riley whispered. “We were all in that room when Matty suggested the drug. And Mac’s a grown man—he could have said no at any time.”

Bozer was with her until then. “ _Pfft_ ,” he waved a dismissive hand in Riley’s direction. “The last time Mac chose himself over the greater good his father blew up,” he pointed out. “No way he was going to tell Matty _no_.”

“Look, if he doesn’t get better soon, we can grill Matty for Jack’s info,” Desi promised. “I just…I need a little more time.”

Bozer nodded. “Okay, but,” he held up a finger, drawing their attention. “We _all_ keep an eye on him. He didn’t even know where he was, ya’ll. It was like…like he was in a dream—one about when we were kids and his dad gave him a telescope.” He shook his head, remembering the cloudy, far-away look in Mac’s eyes. “He was still, y’know, _Mac_. Correcting me about stars and comets and all that. But…he wasn’t _our_ Mac. And it scared me. Not gonna lie.”

“Hey, you got him home, Boze,” Riley reached out a hand and wrapped cool fingers around his. “You found him. It’s more than we were able to do.”

“Thank you,” Desi nodded. “I mean it—I didn’t know what to do.”

“Well, since I’m pretty sure Matty’s going to call us all in at dawn-thirty, let’s get some shut-eye,” Bozer sighed, mentally squirming under the gratitude. “I’ll take the couch.”

The girls nodded, each heading toward their separate rooms as Bozer toed off his shoes and grabbed the blanket from the back of the couch. Lying in the darkness, breathing in the familiar scents of _home_ —even if it wasn’t his anymore—listening to the muted night sounds beyond the windows, he tried to remember how they’d reached this point.

How had it gotten so sideways?

And how was he going to keep his friend from falling over the edge?

**


	2. Chapter 2

**Four Days Earlier—Before the DMT…**

**_Mac_ **

**_**_ **

The ball left his hand, hit the wall, the floor, bounced back up to his palm.

Like magic.

He had felt loss before.

His mother, Harry, Pena, Zoe, Charlie…even Jack, if he wanted to look at it that way. He knew the biology of grief. The way it ebbed and flowed, bringing _what ifs_ and _if onlys_ to the forefront of memory, tying the triggers of the hippocampus, neocortex, and amygdala together in a kaleidoscope of sensory impacts that could leave him feeling wrung out and helpless.

If he let it.

Hand, wall, floor, hand. Magic.

He had seen soldiers breathe their last, had mourned friends, family, and still moved forward. He’d continued on, fighting the good fight.

So, what was his problem now? Just because this time…this time he’d caused it? This time, it had been his fault?

He hadn’t saved Lasky. He’d had to choose between him…or everyone else.

And unlike his father, he chose everyone else. He’d had to sacrifice Lasky—a _good_ man, a father, someone who hadn’t deserved to die—and his father had sacrificed…so many. Too many.

 _Himself_.

And now…what? He was just supposed to fucking live with it? Just supposed to accept that some lives had to be sacrificed? How was he supposed to move forward with that…that _weight_?

Hand, wall, floor, hand. Magic.

The house was silent. The only place he’d ever called home at once both comforting and confining. As though yet again it marked a clear _before_ and an _after._

Before Mom died, he lived somewhere else. After she died, he lived here. Before Dad left, there was instruction and discipline and purpose. After he left, there was Harry. Before Afghanistan, he was a child with a guardian. After, he was an adult, on his own. Before Jack left, he had an Overwatch, a safety net. After he left, he was alone.

Before Dad died, he had anger and indignation. After he died…the world suddenly seemed to yawn wide, tipping him dangerously over a jagged-edged precipice that would cut him apart until he shattered when he reached the bottom.

Hand, wall, floor, hand. Ma—

“It’s not magic,” he muttered aloud, ignoring the scratch of his own voice against the quiet pressing around him. “It’s science.”

_Focus on the facts._

The facts wouldn’t let him down. Wouldn’t abandon him for fifteen years only to reveal they’d been watching him the entire time. Wouldn’t blow up before they could die of cancer, leaving him alone once more.

Facts were impenetrable. Inarguable. Solid. _Real_.

He threw the ball harder this time, relishing the sound as it cracked against the wall, anticipating the sting as it smacked his palm once more.

 _The body of the ball traveled with a velocity vector v=(vx, vy)_ —the formula floated before his eyes, as solid and real as the ball in his grip— _and upon impact the body is reflected off the vertical wall where the velocity vector became v 1=(-vx, vy)._

Solid, real.

_The magnitude of the ball’s velocity vector is the same before and after the rebound off the vertical wall. When it hits the wall, it rebounds with a horizontal velocity v to the left._

Floor. Hand.

_Since momentum is mass times velocity, there would be a tendency to say momentum has been conserved—but momentum changed from +mv to -mv._

Facts he could stand on. Trust. They would never die from cancer or sacrifice. They would never leave him to hunt a faceless enemy.

They would never sit before him, trembling and pale, blood covering their hands with the wires of a bomb—the same goddamn thing he was supposed to excel at rendering harmless—slipping through their trembling fingers, staring up at him with tears in their eyes and tell him through shuddering lips that he was worth it and they wished they had more time.

They would never push him away—over and over—leaving him alone and confused and scared and wondering what the hell he had done only to find out it was simply that he looked like her. They would never walk out, spy on him, orchestrate his life, only to return and ask for his faith in them. They wouldn’t die on him. _For_ him.

Because of _him_.

Facts were constant. _Science_ was constant. Science couldn’t betray. Couldn’t turn everything he thought he knew about it since he was five years old on its side by revealing another side of itself, he never would have believed possible. Science was _real_.

The ball was beginning to leave marks on the wall, scuffs from the force of his throw. His palm was red and stinging from the return thrust.

Momentum. Force. Velocity.

A ball against the wall. Like Hilts marketing time in solitary in _The Great Escape_. Over and over. Numbing himself to memories of watching that movie with his father when he was young. Numbing himself to the reality of the only family he had left a cult-follower he never even knew existed: his mother’s sister.

An aunt who had destroyed every idea, every thought he’d ever had about his mother in one moment of truth that his father hadn’t denied.

Hand. Wall. Floor. Hand.

Facts. Truth.

They weren’t the same. One never changed, regardless of circumstance and viewpoint. The other was dependent upon human fallibility.

Like a friend promising he’d always have a family with him. That he wouldn’t be alone. That if one went _kaboom_ , the other went _kaboom_. Until the game shifted, and what was truth tilted until those words became history, part of his past, a life that once was.

When had everything gone so sideways? When Jack left? Or when he pushed his father away after Charlie died? Why had it been so easy for them to disperse?

Hadn’t they been…family?

He threw the ball harder. There had been a time when he hadn’t felt so hollow. When the pain of breathing wasn’t something he had to force to the back of his mind. When he didn’t have to remember how to smile.

Back before he and Desi were together. When the Phoenix was a reality. When Charlie was alive.

When Jack was there.

His breath caught and he nearly dropped the ball, pausing in his relentless hammering of the wall opposite him. He rested his elbows on his bent knees, pressing the ball against his forehead and closing his burning eyes. He felt biology kicking in.

He _wanted_ to cry. To scream. To punch something. To run so fast his lungs seized up and he fell sobbing to the ground.

But he didn’t move. He barely breathed.

He held himself completely still, out of synch with the world. He was spinning slower than time, faster than his heartbeat. He was tilting and upright and empty and so, incredibly heavy.

All at once.

And it started with feeling his father’s arms—weakened by blood loss, strong enough to connect the wires—around him, and it continued as he followed the man who had killed Charlie—killed Charlie because James killed his son to save Mac…always, _always_ to save Mac—out of the tunnel.

And it stayed.

It stayed as he looked up at the screen where Lasky stood exposed and vulnerable. It stayed as he pressed the button—saving everyone…except Lasky.

It stayed as he debriefed. As he traveled home. As he told Desi he was fine, really, just tired. And no, she didn’t need to stay tonight. As he reassured Bozer that yeah, he would be okay, he always was. As he told Riley he’d talk to her in the morning.

It stayed as he dug his baseball from the box in the garage next to Jack’s boom box and Harry’s wood clamp.

It stayed as he slid with his back to the one wall, facing another, and began to throw.

His breath began to thrash in his chest, fighting to escape and then tripping on its way out. His father had sacrificed himself via a bomb. Mac had lived with an iron band of anxiety wrapped around him for months in Afghanistan thinking that would be his end.

Jack’s end. Knowing it had been Pena’s. And too many others to count.

And now his father’s.

His vision wavered; the ball bounced twice before he caught it. He couldn’t quite pull in a breath.

_One easy breath…it’s just you and me here, kid._

Jack’s voice whispered in his head, a tease of sound that pushed him to throw harder. His shoulder burned with the effort. He wanted to throw that fucking ball through the wall. He wanted to hear it explode against the floor. He wanted it to bruise his hand. To leave a mark that no one could ignore. A mark that showed his pain—real and deep and as unwavering as the facts he depended on.

When a hand darted out to catch the next ball, Mac flinched, startled. Russ Taylor stood next to him, looking down with concern. Mac hadn’t even heard the door open, hadn’t realized anyone was this close to him.

“You, uh…,” Russ’s eyes slid over him, questioning, worried, though Mac knew he’d never admit to such a basic emotion. “You don’t lock your door anymore?”

Mac shrugged, unable to muster the energy to care about vulnerability and exposure and the vast number of enemies who had found their way into his home, trying to kill him.

“The world’s ending,” he replied. “Haven’t you heard?”

Russ huffed, then slid down the wall to sit next to Mac in a move so much like something Jack would have done it stole Mac’s breath for a moment.

“What…what if it’s true?” Mac asked softly. “What if we can’t save everyone?”

Russ tossed the ball gently in his right hand, his head canted back against the wall. “We’ll find a way, Angus.” He glanced to the side. “No one has to die.”

Mac looked down at his red palm, the skin there swollen and throbbing from the abuse. “Tell that to Lasky.”

To his credit, Russ didn’t attempt to dissuade Mac from his guilt. Instead, he let him feel it, sitting next to him in silent solidarity. It reminded him less of Jack and more of…his father.

“When I was nine,” Mac began suddenly, surprising himself with the memory, “I took apart the engine of my dad’s jeep.” Russ watched him, waiting. “When he, uh…when he came down for work, he said, ‘well, I guess we know what you’re doing for your summer’.”

Mac felt his mouth tug up in a sad smile, remembering. “He probably could’ve put it back together in a day, but he wanted me to learn. Took me seven weeks.” Digging into his pocket, he pulled out the flash drive that had been left to him by his father. Looking at it, he said quietly, “He took the bus to work that whole time.”

“What is that?” Russ asked, eyes on the flash drive.

“My dad left a…a goodbye. I’ve been trying to for days, but…I can’t bring myself to watch it.”

“Why not?”

Mac felt the burn at the back of his eyes. _Velocity vector of v 1=(-vx, vy). Momentum of -mv._

Facts. Solid. Dependable.

“Because it’s all I’ve got left,” he confessed, his voice strangled with emotion held captive at the base of his throat. “Once I watch this, then…,” he lifted a shoulder. “He’s gone forever.”

He felt his chin quiver, vision wavering as emotion threatened to jump the wall and escape into the night. “He’s gone, my mom’s gone. I’m…all alone.”

 _God,_ he wanted to run. To leave. To escape. He wanted Jack to be there grabbing the back of his neck and telling him—

“You’re not alone, Angus,” Russ’ quiet voice surprised him with its promise. He looked at him, startled, the tears evaporating in the face of unexpected empathy. “I’ll watch it with you. Come on.”

Mac nodded, allowing Russ to grip his bruised hand and haul him to his feet. They moved to the living room and opened his laptop. Mac took a breath, inserting the drive into the USB slot and watched as his father’s face floated on the screen before him.

For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

_“Angus, if you’re watching this, then…you know. I wish that there was…more time for us, but I need you to listen to something very carefully, right now…”_

Mac barely registered Russ jumping up, grabbing paper, and writing. The string of numbers seemed to float in the air around him, visible, weighted, taunting.

_“You got that, son?”_

He was still processing the fact that his father had left him yet another coded message when the flash drive—and consequently his laptop—began to spark and smoke, destroying itself like something out of a _Mission Impossible_ movie.

“Whoa!” Russ exclaimed, fanning the smoke away.

Mac stared at the blackened screen in shock. “So much for closure,” he muttered.

“We’ll figure this out, Angus,” Russ reassured him, resting a hand on his shoulder.

Mac simply nodded, looking at the burnt husk that had once been his laptop. He was pretty sure Russ said something else—maybe about getting some rest, or locking his door, he wasn’t sure—but the next time he looked up, he was alone again. It occurred to him that Russ took the list of numbers with him, but in that moment, he couldn’t really bring himself to care.

Because of fucking course it was another clue. Nothing with his father had ever been simple. Straightforward. Clear.

There was always a lesson. Always a reach for the things most parents simply offered their children. He’d seen it growing up, especially with the Bozer’s. Where his friend had been shown love, appreciation, trust, he’d had obfuscation. Skepticism. Uncertainty. Thinking back, he couldn’t even find a clear origin of _knowing_ his father loved him.

Restless, Mac stood and began to pace. He’d lost his baseball—couldn’t remember seeing it after Russ caught it. He contemplated waking Riley up and asking to watch a movie, but she’d want to talk about what was troubling him and he wasn’t ready. He pulled out his phone, ignoring the way a spike of adrenaline made his hand tremble, and scrolled to Desi’s number.

Maybe sex would clear his head. There had been several times in the past where they’d simply lost themselves inside one another—no reasons given, no explanation necessary, simply a relentless pursuit of satisfaction and physical exhaustion that seemed to meet mutual needs. For a time.

His thumb hovered over her name, but he couldn’t bring himself to press ‘call’. She may have understood, but he couldn’t bring himself to use her in that way. Rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, he set his phone on the kitchen counter, pulling in slow breaths through his nose, feeling his lungs shudder.

There was always a moment before panic hit—a moment where he could feel it coil inside his chest like a snake waiting to strike. Where his brain slowed in its unending race with itself to get to the end of a thought while simultaneously starting a new one. Where he could count his heartbeats like the fold and stretch of bird wings in flight.

And then the world caught up and his throat closed, and his head pounded and suddenly he couldn’t breathe.

Vision spinning, Mac pressed his palms flat against the kitchen counter, the skin on one hand stinging with the contact. He hung his head, letting the muscles in his neck pull taut, and forced himself to drag in a breath, counting to four. Picturing the numbers in his mind, letting one fade before the next came forward.

It was too small inside the house. He was going to suffocate. He needed to get out get out _get out_.

Before he registered moving, he was standing in his driveway, the loaner car he was driving since Codex saw fit to destroy his truck sitting quiet and dark in front of the house. Pulling in gasps of air through trembling lips he closed his eyes.

He was dizzy, his body swaying with the endorphin rush, lips tingling, hands going numb.

 _Breathe_. That’s what Jack would say. _One easy breath, kid. It’s just you and me here._

But that was Jack just being infuriatingly useless, as if he were the first human to discover that one required oxygen to live. And Jack wasn’t here—to be helpful or useless or put a steadying hand at his neck and promise they would figure this out and god _damn_ it if that didn’t hurt.

He hadn’t allowed himself to think about Jack—about his absence—in…months.

But now the _idea_ of him being near was suddenly every responsibility and obligation and wrong choice and person he’d not saved and people he had saved and it was family and brothers and sacrifice and forgiveness and apology and absolution and hatred and betrayal and love and pain…holy _shit_ so much pain and it hurt…it _hurt_ so much to feel like this, feel it all and he couldn’t breathe through it…he couldn’t fucking _breathe_ ….

He started to run.

He wasn’t dressed for it, still clad in his cargo pants and boots from the day, but he couldn’t stop himself. He ran down his street, hanging a right at the corner, past the safe, quiet, peaceful houses in his neighborhood to the sidewalk with the streetlights every few feet to the hill that wrapped around a wooded area. His legs burned, his feet stung, the weight of his boots pulled at him, making his strides heavy, clumsy.

He ran on, fighting to blank his mind of scene after scene, memory layered on memory of sand swept streets and heavy bomb gear and sun heating up everything he touched, and wires and casings and mechanisms…bomb after bomb he’d disarmed. Every. Single. Moment. He walked away. Every time the world almost collapsed on top of him.

Until the one he couldn’t.

The one he didn’t.

The one that took his father from him.

He ran until his lungs trembled, weeping for want of relief in the cage that was his chest. He ran until he wanted to throw up—and then ran until he did. He ran until he was clear of the trees and stood in an empty lot at the crest of a hill and dropped his head back, hands at his hips, and looked up into the bruised, blue-black pitch that was early morning and choked back a painful sob because, oh, God… _the sky._

It stretched out above him as far as he could see, peppered by the light of so many stars, dead light still brilliant and welcoming and hopeful. Dragging in gulps of breath, letting his body tick down like a cooling engine, Mac thought if light that clean could exist for years far beyond the star’s life, could be seen by him now when the star it came from died long before he was born, then maybe… _maybe_ he could find his path through this new reality.

Maybe he could navigate without the anchor of knowing his father was in the world, even if he wasn’t _with_ him. Maybe he could forgive Jack for never coming back. Maybe he could find another way to save the planet than his mother’s doomsday solution of wiping out half the population.

On trembling legs, he turned and began to walk back toward home. It took him over two hours, and twice he considered simply sitting on the curb and waiting until Riley woke up to find him missing and came looking for him. When he finally reached his front door, he slipped inside, the silence of the early morning reassuring that no one was any the wiser of his panic-fueled midnight run.

He showered, changed, and headed into the Phoenix lab without bothering to even try to sleep, all-too aware of the nightmares that would chase him. Besides, if he was going to find another way to save the world, he had a lot of work to do.

He spent three days preparing, plotting, and building, gathering enough supplies to pack survival kits for Riley and Desi—and one for Bozer as well, even if he didn’t live there anymore—and start on an air-scrubber prototype. The crossbow had been a particularly challenging find, but he felt as satisfied with that purchase as he did with finding a month’s supply of Riley’s favorite candy bars.

He rested, showered, ate, and put enough focus into sex with Desi that she hadn’t bothered him with questions as to what was distracting him, what he was thinking about.

It wasn’t until Matty called them into the War Room and Russ revealed that he’d cracked James’ code that Mac felt his façade slip. He saw their eyes scanning him worriedly, braced for…what? A tantrum? A break-down?

Who did they think he was?

If Russ cracked the code, the only logical next step was to follow the clue. That’s what he did, wasn’t it? Follow the clues laid out by his father, until he had nowhere left to go. It’s what he’d done since the day his father walked out of his life. Why change now?

He felt a hand close at the base of his throat when Russ revealed the cipher had been Steve McQueen’s birthday. Because _of course_ it would be—his dad’s favorite movie. The one from where Mac had picked up the super-effective ball-throwing coping mechanism.

Even Jack would have appreciated that.

 _Jack_.

How many months had the man stuck with him on his quest to find his father? How many goose chases had he willingly gone on just to satisfy Mac’s need to follow a particular thread? And now here they were, once more following a clue that had to do with his father and Jack would never know.

And he _wanted_ him to know. More than he’d ever admit. To anyone.

When they entered the house located at the coordinates left by his father, Mac felt the hairs on his neck, hands, backs of his arm all stand at attention. There was something here—it felt like he was standing in the space where lightning was about to strike. He could practically smell the ozone.

Wait…not ozone. _Bleach_.

Bottles of it, covered by years and years of cobwebs and dust. Who would leave bottles of bleach…?

While the others wandered carefully next to and behind him, Mac felt a charge beneath his skin. As if he was existing both on this plane and outside of it at once. As he moved toward the hallway bookshelf, he saw instantly the organization of the books was specific, intentional.

The Periodic Table of Elements. The elemental numbers and symbols practically hovered in the air before his eyes, beckoning him. All except….

“Silver is missing,” he murmured, ignoring the curious look Russ tossed his way. He reached through the space between the books and grasped what felt like a lever.

As the bookshelves parted, Mac felt the room before him take a breath—air trapped for decades suddenly released, the stale smell of aging paper and copper wires, electronic components and cranks, dried-up kerosene lanterns all swept around him and pulled him forward like a guiding hand.

The suspended reality of the moment stayed, blanketing him in a sense of wonder and disbelief and how… _how_ had his father known?

Tesla. This was Tesla’s house. His father had known where _Tesla’s_ house was, had known that Mac would need that bit of information. Had known _before_ they were ambushed by Codex, taken by Gwen.

Had known before Mac learned of File 47. Had known long before Mac learned what his mother’s plan to save the world had entailed.

His father had known Codex would be looking for this house, the secrets of _this room_ , long before Mac had even known Codex existed. He’d known of File 47 since Mac was a child. He’d known… _all_ of this.

And he’d waited until he was dead to offer Mac a string of numbers to lead him here.

The familiar feelings of indignation and anger when it came to James MacGyver began to make themselves once more at home center mass of Mac’s chest. But he couldn’t be distracted. He couldn’t let emotion get in the way of logic, not now. Not…ever. He shoved it all into a box inside his mind, scanning the room for purpose, for reasons, for _something_ that made this discovery matter.

Shiva. A compass. The map—of course! The map mirrored on the ceiling could only mean—

The arrival of Codex sent Mac’s mind into overdrive. His quick thinking with the copper wire and Tesla’s power crank-generated power source was able to incapacitate two of the Codex soldiers, but as always seemed to be their lot in life, the Phoenix team was quickly outnumbered. Mac waded into the melee, pulling one of the bigger men away from Desi’s slighter frame, freeing her to continue her battle with the red-headed “mean one”.

If Mac hadn’t been distracted by the sight of the flames emerging from the secret room, by the smell of the smoke and the sound of his friends fighting with the Codex soldiers, he might not have been caught so completely by surprise.

As it was, the brute force of the body that crashed into him, slamming him first against the wall and then the floor drove the air from his lungs. Mac heard more than felt the impact against the wood just before a spear of blinding pain cut through his head and without preamble, everything went dark.

No noise, no struggle, no whirring thoughts.

And he relaxed into the black.

* * *

_**Desi** _

**_**_ **

“Mac!”

She saw from the corner of her eyes the way his body crashed against the wall, registered how he collapsed to the floor, his head cracking against the hard, wood floor, but then Red was coming at her again. Relentless. Angry. A crazy mirrored version of herself.

Desi sank into a cluster of muscle memory, blocking, punching, kicking, choosing targets on the other woman’s body to inflict maximum damage. She smelled smoke, heard Riley shouting for Russ, and then suddenly one of the black-clad Codex soldiers was grabbing Red and pulling her back.

“C’mon,” he growled, “we got it!”

Red allowed herself to be hauled away, offering a smirk in Desi’s direction as a parting _fuck you_. Desi grabbed a breath, then turned on her heels and hurried toward where Mac lay sprawled prone across the hallway. A glance to her left as she passed the opening of the secret room told her Russ was getting the fire under control with Riley’s help.

She slid to her knees next to Mac, put a hand on his shoulder and shook him gently.

“Mac?”

His muscles felt oddly heavy in her grip; there was no resistance whatsoever. She’d woken him from nightmares—more times than she could, or wanted to, count—and he’d always felt tense under her hand. His body resistant to the touch, even when he wasn’t fully aware.

Now, he was…limp. Pliant. As if he wasn’t even…there.

“Mac, c’mon, baby…,” she shook him again, leaning over his body to try to get a look at his face.

No blood. That was something at least. But he wasn’t waking up. He wasn’t even stirring, tensing, groaning. There was…nothing.

“He okay?” Russ’ voice floated toward her from the room.

“He won’t wake up,” she reported.

“Codex took the map,” Riley muttered, emerging from the smokey room to climb over Mac’s outstretched legs, crouching down on the other side of him. “Mac?” she laid a hand gently on the side of his face. “C’mon, we need you here.”

Desi cupped the back of his neck, bracing his head, then nodded toward Riley as together they eased Mac over to his back, Desi keeping her hand at the base of his skull. She frowned at how heavy his head felt even then. She expected him to wince, grimace, maybe complain of his head hurting a bit, but at least to _wake_.

“Hey, Mac,” Riley continued to encourage Mac to consciousness, tapping his cheek lightly. “C’mon. Need to you wake up.”

Russ stepped out of the room and Desi saw from the corner of her eye that he held something in his hand. It wasn’t until he reached across Mac to feel his pulse that she realized it was the compass that Mac had found earlier in the room.

“Pulse is skipping a bit,” Russ muttered. He pressed his knuckles against Mac’s sternum, rubbing rigorously. Mac groaned slightly but didn’t stir. “Did someone hit him?”

Desi shook her head. “Threw him against the wall,” she replied. She reached down and wrapped her fingers around his hand. “Hey, Mac, wake up, okay?”

She’d seen him roughed up. She’d seen him in pain. Had seen him shout himself awake from a nightmare he couldn’t share with her, his body shaking and sweating in reaction.

But…she hadn’t seen this. She needed him to wake up and look at her. She needed the reassurance of his smile, his eyes crinkling up until the blue was barely visible—his face just a mess of lashes and laugh lines.

“We need to get him out of here,” Russ declared, looking over at the ruined room they’d just vacated.

“It’s not like we can call an ambulance,” Riley shot back. “We can’t explain this place. And we’re our own exfil.”

Russ nodded, handing Desi the compass. “We’ll have to carry him to the car.”

Desi frowned. She was strong, but Mac was tall and all muscle. She’d felt his weight on top of her enough times when he was in control of it to know how heavy he would be. She exchanged a look with Riley and saw the other woman was as doubtful as she as to how they were going to get him to the car.

Russ didn’t hesitate; with strength born of confidence, he collected Mac’s arm, pulling the other man forward until he was sitting forward, his head dropping back on a loose neck. Desi winced, cupping the back of his head with her free hand, watching as Russ tucked his shoulder into Mac’s middle and situated the younger man’s head and shoulders on his back before grabbing Mac’s hips and pushing to his feet, Mac hanging over his shoulder like a lanky rag doll.

Riley and Desi surged to their feet in unison.

“Grab anything you think we need from the room,” Russ grunted, Mac’s weight a burden.

Riley hurried to do just that, then made her way around them, opening the front door and heading quickly down the stairs to the car. She opened the back door and stepped aside as Desi climbed in and reached for Mac. Russ and Riley eased him in, gentle hands at the back of his head, his back, his waist, handing him over to Desi’s waiting arms.

Throughout the whole process, Mac didn’t make a sound. Only years of practice being a female soldier in a man’s world helped Desi school her features to hide the fear this stillness, this silence, shot through her. Once his legs were tucked into the car, knees bent so that his boots pressed against the back of the seat in front of him, Riley closed the door and jumped into the front seat, Russ behind the wheel.

“It’s a little over an hour to the Phoenix,” Russ reminded them, glancing at Desi in the rear-view mirror.

“I know,” Desi replied, one hand pressed to the side of Mac’s face, the other across his chest, feeling him breathe.

“I’ll call Matty,” Riley informed them. “She can have medical ready.”

Desi just nodded as Russ pulled away from the curb, merging into the California traffic.

“Matty,” Riley greeted through the speaker phone once she connected back with the Phoenix. “We found the house, but Mac’s hurt. We need you to have Medical on standby.”

_“Hurt? How bad?”_

Riley shot a look over her shoulder at where Mac lay unconscious and unmoving in Desi’s lap.

“He took a pretty hard hit to the head,” Riley report. “Unconscious, unresponsive to stimuli.”

Desi could hear Matty saying something to another person in the room, and then she was back on the phone. _“How did this happen?”_

“Codex jumped us,” Russ reported, tilting his head a bit toward where Riley held out her phone so the mic could pick up his voice. “The house belonged to Tesla. There was a secret room with plans for a weapon. Mac had just figured out something regarding the weapon’s location when the soldiers descended upon us.”

 _“Did they find the weapon’s location?”_ Matty asked.

Riley grimaced. “They took the map where we think the location was marked.”

 _“But you’re not sure,”_ Matty ascertained.

“We’re not, but…,” Riley looked over her shoulder, “Mac was. He was about to tell us when we were hit.”

 _“So, Codex has the map to the possible location of a weapon and our only hope of tracking it or them is currently unconscious,”_ Matty summed up.

“That about covers it,” Russ replied.

In Desi’s lap, Mac flinched, his head shifting to the side, but he didn’t wake. Desi began to thread her fingers through his hair, a soothing motion she’d realized months ago he craved, but could never ask for. It calmed him after some of his rougher nightmares. She wondered who had discovered that this motion helped him. He’d been too young to remember something like this when his mom died. And there was _no way_ she would believe that Oversight had that level of awareness and sensitivity for his son.

 _“We need to get the information from Mac,”_ Matty declared. _“When you get here, bring him to the lab.”_

“But, Matty—” Riley started to protest, speaking for all of them.

 _“Trust me,”_ Matty declared, her voice hardening with authority. _“If Codex gets to this weapon before we do, we won’t have to worry about waiting File 47 to wipe out half the population.”_

“Matty, I’m afraid Riley isn’t exaggerating,” Russ spoke up, accelerating through a gap in the traffic. “Angus is pretty badly hurt.”

 _“I’ve got that covered,”_ Matty replied. _“Just get him to the lab.”_

The line went dead, and Riley looked over her shoulder once more at Desi, her dark eyes resting on Mac. Desi took a slow breath, rubbing Mac’s sternum once again.

Mac groaned and all three of the others in the car straightened at the sound.

“Mac?” Desi reached for his lax hand, pressing her thumb into the pulse point at the juncture of his thumb and fingers. “Hey, you with us?”

His head turned slightly against her thigh and she saw his long lashes flutter slightly, a glimpse of blue peeking through before he sagged once more, his weight seeming to increase. Desi kept one hand in his hair, looking up toward the front where Riley was looking back at them. She realized the other woman’s gaze was locked elsewhere and tracked her line of sight to Mac’s hands.

They flinched.

As if he were trying to climb from the darkness, wanting to reach for something but unable to fully grasp it. On instinct, Desi took the compass that Russ and handed her and pressed it into the palm of Mac’s hand, wrapping his fingers around the cool brass casing. His grip flexed, as though he were anchoring himself on the compass.

He didn’t move again until they reached the Phoenix. Russ pulled around to the back entrance and they saw a stretcher was waiting for them. Russ climbed out and helped the two medical personnel ease Mac from the back seat and Desi’s lap. They moved him as though he were made of blown glass, setting him down on the stretcher with a deference that seemed to scream at her they knew who he was, what he had done, and they respected the hell out of him.

Making sure his arms were secured across his body—the compass still in his grip—the medics began to wheel him inside with Russ, Desi, and Riley trailing behind.

“Aren’t you even going to examine him?” Riley asked.

“Ms. Webber said to bring him straight to the lab,” one of the medics replied, stalwartly not looking in Riley’s direction.

“And you’re okay with that?” Desi challenged.

The same man who’d spoken up, glanced over at her and she could see in his dark eyes that he was very much _not_ okay with it…but orders were orders. Exchanging a glance with Riley, her own scowl mirrored in her teammates, Desi hurried to keep up with the longer-legged medics as they wheeled Mac to the lab.

Bozer greeted them, his face going a bit slack when he saw Mac’s bruised face. After a moment of surprised hesitation, he gestured to a chair situated in the center of the lab, machines positioned at the head for which Desi had no idea the purpose of. The medics wheeled Mac over to the chair and with practiced precision moved him from the stretcher to the chair, his head lolling slightly.

“We need to administer adrenaline,” Matty instructed them.

“Whoa, wait,” Bozer held up a hand. “You’re going to _Pulp Fiction_ him? ‘Cause he had to go through that back when Mason took over the place and it wasn’t exactly fun.”

The medic who’d spoken up earlier nodded in agreement with Bozer. “I don’t recommend adrenaline,” he said. “You could give him a heart attack—or cause brain damage, and I suspect that’s the opposite of what you’re looking to do.”

Matty leveled an exasperated gaze at the medic. “What do you recommend?”

“Aside from allowing his body to heal, and wake on its own?” he replied in a clipped, irritated tone that shot him up on Desi’s respect list immediately. “We could give him a dose of zolpidem.”

Desi frowned, holding up a hand to stop any immediate movement. “Wait, isn’t that like…Ambien?”

The medic nodded. “Yes, but it’s been shown to revive some coma patients.”

“Let’s do it,” Matty ordered.

They waited as the medics left to retrieve the meds. Riley stood on one side of Mac’s reclined chair, gripping the arm rest with tense fingers. Desi kept one hand in his, the other stroking his hair. Matty and Russ were off to the side, arguing in hushed tones—the topic of which Desi didn’t need to hear to understand.

“Huh, what do you know,” Bozer spoke up, looking up from where he held his phone in his hand. “They’re right—zolpidem has actually been shown to wake people who were thought to be in a permanent vegetative state.”

“Did you think they were lying?” Desi asked, keeping her eyes on Mac’s face, marveling at how much younger he appeared—even more so than when he slept.

He always slept…tense. As if he were waiting for the bottom to drop out of the world during the night. But right now, he almost looked…peaceful.

“Not… _lying_ ,” Bozer replied. “Just not all that big of a fan of his not being in medical right now.”

“Ma’am,” the medic spoke up from the doorway. “We’re ready.”

“Go ahead,” Matty nodded.

“Matty—” Russ protested, sounding as though it wasn’t for the first time.

She shot him a look and Russ closed his mouth with a click. The medic nodded, stepping forward and grasping Mac’s arm, cleaning off the bend of his elbow and exposing a vein. He administered a small dosage of the zolpidem, then checked Mac’s pupil reaction, pulse, and stepped back.

“Shouldn’t been too long, now,” he reported, moving away so that the others could close in.

For several moments, nothing changed. Desi curled her fingers into Mac’s hand watching his face, her breath catching when she saw his eyes begin to roll restlessly behind his closed lids as the drug took effect. After a moment, he pulled in a slow breath, surfacing once more into consciousness, turning his head on the chair, and blinking sluggishly.

His hand came up, still gripping the compass and she watched as he focused in on that object, forcing himself into awareness.

“Hey,” he managed, his voice like crushed gravel as he looked blearily around at the group bent over him. “How, uh…how long w-was I out?”

The hand holding the compass dropped heavily in his lap.

“Just a couple of hours,” Russ replied.

Mac started to sit forward, and his face immediately paled, a line appearing between his brows. Desi rested a hand on his shoulder, slightly dismayed at how easy it was for her to press him back against the chair.

“Hey, I think you should stay still, okay?” 

Mac blinked at her and she could see him wince against the brightness of the lights in the lab—the photophobia helping to cement her assumption of a concussion. He sighed as he narrowed his focus on her.

“What happened?”

Russ stepped forward. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Mac slid his focus over at him, then looked down at the compass in his hand as if he was surprised to see it there, despite the fact that he hadn’t loosened his grip since she folded into his palm over an hour ago.

“We…we were at…Tesla’s house,” he started, eyes unfocused as he searched his memory for clarity. “And then we found all that cool stuff in the…room?” He blinked up at them, his tone oddly modulated, like a kid looking for reassurance of the correct answers. “And then…fire?”

Desi felt her heart curl up at the confusion rolling from him in waves. It wasn’t like him… _none_ of this was. “Okay, you know what? He’s concussed. We all just need to take a step back—”

“Wait,” Mac broke in, frowning at the compass in his hand. “Shiva? Why…wh-why am I thinking about a-a Hindu deity?”

Desi put her hand on his shoulder. “Mac, I think you should just rest, okay?”

“No,” Matty shook her head. “No, there’s no time. We need what’s in his head.”

Mac looked over at Riley, confused. Riley took a breath, then focused on him.

“Codex has the map,” she told him.

“Oh,” Mac blinked. “They…ambushed us,” he said, reaching up and rubbing gently at the bruise forming on the side of his face. “I remember that, but…why?”

“They had to have known about Oversight’s code,” Bozer offered. The mention of his father had Mac’s head dropping back against the chair. “I’m guessing they wanted us to break it, so we’d lead them to Tesla’s map.”

“After you went down,” Russ said on a sigh, “they overpowered us…and took what they came for.” He looked over at Matty. “The map. That leads to Tesla’s superweapon…which Tesla must have hidden so it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands, and the map shows us where.”

“We need to get that superweapon before the global terrorist organization does,” Matty broke in, her tone setting Desi’s nerves on edge.

“How? _They_ have the map.”

Riley put her hand on Mac’s shoulder, drawing his gaze. “Mac, before the ambush, you said that even if you had the map, you’d need the room to decipher it.”

“I did?” Mac replied, his eyes going distant once more. Riley nodded, and he looked down at the compass again. His brows folded as he reached up to press his fingers gingerly against the side of his head. “I…can’t remember why….”

“Memory loss is unpredictable,” Russ sighed. “It could come back in days, years…never.”

“Fortunately, I thought of that,” Matty replied. She looked across the chair. “Bozer, go tell Cheryl to come on in here.”

Desi saw Bozer frown before he nodded and stepped out of the lab. Matty looked at Mac, ignoring the rest of them for the moment.

“Mac, my colleague Dr. Cheryl Warner works at DARPA,” she informed him. “They have been working on a new drug that will stimulate memory. I think it can help you remember what we need to find Tesla’s weapon.”

Mac opened his mouth to reply, but before he could throw himself on this grenade, Desi spoke up. “Hang on,” she said raising her hand once more in a gesture of arrested movement. “We just gave him some new drug to wake him up, and now we’re going to give him _another_ one?”

“Des—” Mac started.

“It’s an experimental psychotropic drug,” said a new voice, drawing their eyes. A young, pretty black woman in a white lab coat walked into the room, heading directly to one of the machines positioned at the head of the chair where Mac lay. “It’s designed to help trauma patients recover lost memories.”

“Is it safe?” Desi asked as Bozer joined them once more.

Cheryl chuffed. “It’s so not safe.”

Mac frowned but didn’t immediately resist. Desi looked at him, at once concerned and unsurprised. The safety of the drug wouldn’t be on his radar—especially if it could help them stop a terrorist organization—but it was definitely on hers.

“Mac, I don’t know, man,” Bozer interjected.

“I won’t lie to you,” Cheryl looked at Mac. “Some patients have suffered severe reactions to this drug. Mental breakdowns. Some…irreversible.”

“Mac,” Desi tightened her grip on his hand. “You don’t have to do this.”

“If I don’t…how are we going to find Tesla’s weapon before Codex?” He challenged. The room was silent. “Exactly. So, let’s do it.”

“What if—” Bozer tried once more.

“Boze,” Mac leveled his eyes on his friend and for the first time since he opened them, Desi realized they looked clear. “They had my dad’s code. I didn’t even know there _was_ a code, and they had it.”

Bozer nodded, dropping a hand on Mac’s knee. “I know, man.”

“I gotta do this,” Mac said quietly, looking at Bozer, but speaking to all of them.

Desi glanced around at the faces of the team peering back at him, registered the worry she saw there and felt shame that it wasn’t for him. Not really. It was for the unknown. The fact that Codex was beating them. The fact that they didn’t know where this weapon was.

A hollow echo of dread seemed to grow inside her at this realization. Especially as she acknowledged that she shared it. _And_ that Mac accepted it.

He lay on the chair in the middle of the lab, face bruised and pinched with pain, without any water or pain meds from being thrown into a wall, and accepted that he was a necessary and sophisticated tool they had to use to help save the world. It was his acceptance that truly hollowed her out.

He lay still as Cheryl attached the electrodes to his head and chest, listened as she told him she would administer a sedative and only the adrenaline from finding the memory would bring him out of it, and allowed Riley to remove the compass from his grip. Desi stepped back, giving Cheryl room to work, and watched as Mac’s eyes drifted, drooping low as he counted backwards from ten, making it to eight before he went lax once more.

Too soon. It was _too soon_ to see him completely out like this. And this time…they did it to him.

Desi wrapped her arms around herself, registering that Riley had come up to stand beside her, close enough to touch, but staying apart. Cheryl kept her eyes on the readouts on her machines and Desi wondered if they should bring the medic in on this as they watched Mac’s heart rate spike.

“He’s having a reaction to the drug,” Cheryl reported, eyes on the machines as everyone else stared at Mac.

Desi stepped forward as Mac twisted, his back arching as if in pain, breath coming in staccato bursts as if he couldn’t get enough air. A low groan slipped free as his teeth ground together, the muscle along his jaw bunching into a knot.

“Can’t you do something?” Bozer demanded.

“Either he’ll come out of it, or we have to shoot his system with adrenaline,” Cheryl replied matter-of-factly.

Mac dropped back against the chair once more, lips parting with a rough exodus of air, and Desi saw a tear slip from his closed lids, sliding toward his hair. Without thinking, Desi reached out and brushed the tear away before anyone else could see, but as she drew her hand back, she realized that Bozer was watching her. His eyes bounced between Mac’s tense face to her hand and back, his own expression tight with helplessness.

In that moment, she realized as lighthearted and unaffected as Bozer often seemed, he was more attuned to Mac’s pain than any of them—he’d seen it first-hand, she knew, since before Mac’s father left him. And she wasn’t sure what to do with that.

The machine beeped shrilly once more, and Mac began to shake. At first it was just his hands, fingers curled in toward his palms, but they could see it travel up his arms and throughout his body, a low, almost keening sound sliding from between his parted lips. Desi stepped forward again and grabbed his hand, hoping to ground him.

Remind him why he was doing this. Why _he_ mattered.

“Cheryl,” Matty warned. “I know you can give him something.”

“It could delay the results,” the doctor replied.

Russ stepped forward. “Damn the results; you can see he’s in pain! If you can stop it, bloody do something!”

Cheryl shot him an irritated look and readied a syringe.

“What is that?” Bozer asked, tone anxious.

“A bit more of the sedative,” she replied, holding Mac’s trembling arm steady as she injected it into his vein. “He’s fighting the effects of the drug—basically trying to escape his own mind. This will help him give in to the effects. Might make it harder to get him back, though.”

In moments Mac began to relax, his trembling easing, his heart rate leveling out.

“What do you mean, harder to get him back?” Bozer asked as Mac’s head lolled against the chair.

Cheryl shrugged, looking over at him with a bland expression. “It’s as I said…the drug is experimental. Either he’ll come out of it or—”

“Yeah, yeah, I got you,” Bozer grumbled. “ _Pulp Fiction_ time.”

“We can’t all just wait for Mac to wake up,” Matty declared. “Russ, take Desi and Riley and see what you can find out about Tesla and Shiva.”

“Wait, Matty, I—” Desi began.

Matty looked up at her, expression grim. “I know you want to be here for him,” she said quietly. “But remember why he’s doing this—and if he fails, we have to have something to fall back on.”

“He won’t fail,” Bozer declared. “Mac doesn’t know how to fail.”

“Even so,” Matty said, looking at Riley, then Russ. “We have to do all we can to get that weapon. I need you to help him.”

Desi looked at Mac, his face peaceful for the moment, his body no longer twisted in pain.

“I won’t let it go on too long,” Matty said to her. “I promise.”

Desi crossed her arms, studying their deceptively diminutive boss. “I’m not sure it hasn’t gone on too long already,” she muttered.

“C’mon,” Riley bumped her arm with an elbow. “I have an idea where we can dig into information to help Mac when he comes back to us.”

Desi nodded, taking one more look at Mac’s unconscious form before following Russ and Riley from the lab, her conscience filing away at her heart. She should never have let him agree to taking that drug—not now, not with his head all…unsteady. And his emotional state…well, not stable. She should have fought to figure out another way. _Any_ other way. No matter what some global terrorist organization threatened.

As she climbed into the truck, she was forced to acknowledge this choice was the latest bit of evidence that she wasn’t really the right fit for this job anymore. No matter what her heart might be trying to tell her.

* * *

_Mac_

**_**_ **

Awareness surged through him like a jolt of electricity, bowing his back and sending his sense into hyperactive overdrive. Helplessly, he shot forward gasping open-mouthed for air, eyes so wide the air began to dry them almost immediately. Pain shimmered through him like a flood, washing its way from his head to his chest to his hands until they ached like he’d been immersed in frigid water.

"Easy."

He heard the word, but for the life him, he couldn't understand it. Compared to the cacophony of memory he’d been struggling through, it was too…simple. The word was repeated, and Mac felt his mind break apart the letters, examining each as a foreign object, disconnected from meaning.

The word changed then, slid into a different skin, a different sound and he realized it was a plea. Instructions. Caution.

Blinking, he registered filtered, electric light filling the immediate space around him. Pain flared—at first from everywhere, indiscernible—and Mac halted the motion his body had apparently been instinctively engaged in: sitting up.

“You’re lucky,” an unfamiliar British voice informed him. “I was just about to _Pulp Fiction_ you.”

Mac swallowed convulsively, nausea threatening in reaction to the pain that seemed to shift and bounce within him. He blinked, trying to focus on the faces and saw a woman in a white lab coat standing next to him, holding a large syringe in her grip like a stake she meant to drive through his heart.

He pushed away from something, someone, the flight instinct strong in his confusion. Hands pressed against him again, and freezing mid-rise, he held his breath.

“Whoa, okay, hey now.”

Now, _that_ voice he knew.

"Take a breath. Mac? Breathe."

“Boze?” _God_ , he sounded like he’d been swallowing razorblades.

“Right here, Mac,” Bozer’s hand rested on his arm, his face swimming into view. “Just breathe a minute, okay?”

He could do that. He could breathe. Except, the air hurt. It hurt his chest and his throat and _holy shit_ his head. The groan that slipped free rattled his head, his eyes trembling with the misery of the sound.

"Hang on, just…. Lemme help."

Hands were on his shoulder, his waist, shifting him, settling him. He kept blinking, his eyes watering, resisting the burn and buzz of light that filtered in and seemed to sear the cracks in his skull. His stomach rolled, sending his balance awry and he pulled in a sharp breath, instinctively tamping down the threatening nausea.

Another groan escaped, tugged forward by the relentless pull of pain. He began to automatically take stock, training kicking in to override the ache, a vague memory of danger sending his heart rate into overdrive. He needed to be ready to move.

Except it appeared as though he was made of glass and moving was a very, very bad idea.

“How you feelin’, man?”

Bozer’s voice seemed to echo around him, the hand gripping his arm like an icy brand. His entire body felt stretched and pressed flat at once, his lungs seized and fluttered in his chest, and oh, _God_ , his head….

“I c-can…I can taste…colors,” he managed, knowing on some level the words didn’t make sense, but the meaning was right.

Everything was just… _too much_. He slumped back against the tilted chair.

“Mac,” Matty broke in as Mac searched for her, trying to lock in images with voices. “What did you remember?”

And like a tsunami of memory, he saw the house, his mother dressed like an extra from _Guys & Dolls_, Lasky, Edison, Bell, Tesla….

“The map,” he rasped, clearing his throat. “It’s backwards. No…upside…upside down.”

Bozer’s hand tightened. “Which one?”

“B-both,” Mac stammered, trying and failing to push himself upright. “Where’s Riley—”

“They’re in trouble,” Bozer informed him, pulling him forward and resting a steady hand on his back. “They cracked Tesla’s pigeon code and found the gold mine, but—”

“They’re l-looking in the…wrong place,” Mac gasped, swinging his legs over the edge of the chair. His chest hitched, the sharp pain cutting through him.

“What, like _Indiana Jones_?” Bozer squeaked, grabbing Mac’s arm.

Mac gripped his friend’s hand for support, grateful that Bozer was much stronger than anyone took him for, and got to his feet.

“Kinda, yeah,” he nodded, his vision swimming as he stood. “Need to…need to talk to them.”

“War Room,” Matty ordered, and headed out of the lab.

Bozer made sure Mac was steady, then released him to follow Matty to the War Room, Mac close behind. As he moved through the room and down the hall, Mac felt detached, disconnected. He watched his fingers skip across the doorway threshold, as they trailed along the wall, guiding him, and it felt as though he was watching someone else’s hands.

He breathed shallow, feeling as though broken glass crashed around inside him with each step. He registered Bozer calling his name at the doorway leading to the War Room and looked up to see his friend’s worried dark eyes on him. He tried to nod, but thought better of it, afraid with the way the world was shifting around him he’d tilt the wrong way and fall off the edge.

He managed to make it to the chair and drop down heavily, listening as Matty dialed in the team currently underground.

Sitting helped. The world balanced a bit. Still hurt to breathe, though.

Hearing Russ’ voice, and then Desi and Riley speaking up, focused Mac’s attention. Suddenly it didn’t matter that his hands didn’t belong to him, or he couldn’t feel the chair he was sitting in, or that there were images—memories?—floating at the edges of his perception.

He had a purpose; he was needed.

He visualized Tesla’s room, the map, listened as his friends followed his directions to the room in the abandoned mine to find Tesla’s weapon, listened as they were trapped down those dark tunnels by Codex. Felt the tension and anxiety permeate the space around him, lining Bozer and Matty’s faces as they looked to him to solve this.

To save their friends.

His mind became a kaleidoscope of formulas and solutions, his voice steadying as he closed his eyes, instructing Desi on what to do to keep Codex from getting into that room and getting his friends. He had to do this—it _had to_ work. He could not lose anyone else.

Not one more person. 

“I have an idea,” he declared through their tenuous audio connection, “but you need to get some space between you and them.”

Because if this didn’t work the way he thought it would…if it in fact exploded…. He took a low, shuddering breath. He remembered all too well how an explosion of that magnitude felt. How the ground rolled, and the heat flashed like a furnace and how the body could feel simultaneously stretched and compressed for just one instant.

Reflexively rubbing his trembling hands against his knees, he pulled in his lower lip, biting it until the pain brought clarity.

“Desi, open Tesla’s trunk.”

 _“Mac,”_ he heard her call to him. _“There’s something else in the trunk. Looks like some sort of…hand crank.”_

He’d been counting on that. “Great. That should be a power source. I think it’s a generator.”

_“Well, it looks broken because the wires are crumbling.”_

He could work with that. “All right, well,” he rubbed at his bruised head distractedly, “we need to get it working.”

 _“Why?”_ She sounded worried.

He couldn’t say he blamed her. As per usual, he was making this up as he went along, only this time he was using them as his hands.

“’Cause you’re gonna use it.” He heard Russ and Riley exclaiming as they fought to keep Codex away. “All right, you need wire. Uh…,” he thought quickly, “look for a telegraph wire or…or a mining phone.”

He’d built a Faraday Cage once before, with Jack. It had protected the son of a diplomat they’d rescued from kidnappers. He remembered Jack’s whoop of delight when it had worked; Mac could imagine it had appeared like a bunch of hope and magic, but really, it was just science.

And science had yet to let him down.

_“Mac, it’s working!”_

“Good, let them through,” he took a trembling breath, “and let ‘er rip.”

The static on the comms seemed to fill the room. It felt like he was drowning in the sound.

“Desi, report,” Matty demanded.

Like an impenetrable darkness pressing around him, the static continued. Mac stopped breathing. He felt the room around him go completely still, imagined he could hear Bozer’s heartbeat as his friend sank down on the couch near him.

“Desi?” He pleaded, his voice cracking. “Say something… _please_.”

_“We’re okay!”_

Mac felt dizzy with relief.

He covered his face and sank back against the chair, the vertigo hitting him with almost paralyzing force. His body suddenly felt weighted, hands dropping to his lap as though they weighed a thousand pounds. He couldn’t even open his eyes.

“You did it, man,” Bozer said, his voice careful and quiet next to him.

Mac didn’t— _couldn’t—_ respond. He heard Matty say something, Bozer reply, but his head was full of voices and figures and the sight of his mother’s sad eyes and the memory of Donnie slamming him against a bar and the fear of suffocating and the shock of facing himself—

He gasped, opening his eyes. It had been… _him_. But also… _not_ him? How—?

“Mac,” Bozer was saying. “You good, man?”

Mac blinked over at him, eyes burning, the pain in his head spiking at his temples. “Yeah,” he replied, hearing the weariness in his tone. “Yeah, I’m good.” He noticed they were alone in the room, and tried to sit forward, unable to even lift his head.

“I’m worried about you, man,” Bozer said, reaching for him and helping him upright, keeping a hand on his shoulder when Mac felt his body sway. “That DARPA doc was saying all this stuff about you going into the wrong part of your brain and getting lost there, and I…,” he shuddered slightly. “I know you’re back, but I’m not so sure you didn’t…go there.”

“’m okay, Boze,” Mac tried to reassure him, ignoring the strange shadows floating at the edges of his vision.

“What…what was it like?” Bozer asked.

Mac was glad his friend didn’t move his hand away. He needed that grounding; without it, he felt like he might literally float away and disappear.

“Surreal,” he answered truthfully. He slid his eyes up to Bozer’s face, seeing the strain there, the worry. The fear—for _him_ , he could tell. It made him self-conscious. The only person he’d ever been comfortable seeing him this…vulnerable…hadn’t been around for almost two years now. He mentally squared his shoulders and shifted his balance. “Kinda like…getting stoned and listening to _Dark Side of the Moon_ while watching _The Wizard of Oz_.”

Bozer narrowed his eyes. “That was one time.”

Mac let his mouth relax into a smile, feeling a sense of accomplishment for distracting Bozer, not really registering how spacy that grin appeared.

“You were pretty out of it, though.”

“You weren’t much better,” Bozer grumbled, pushing to his feet and anchoring Mac’s arm.

Mac grunted as Bozer pulled him up, the feeling of sharp edges inside him returning with a vengeance. “I wasn’t stoned.”

“Dude, look up contact high sometime,” Bozer declared, and eased Mac’s arm across his shoulders without preamble. Mac wanted to protest, but realized his body was a bit too heavy to move on his own. “You were floating.”

_I never felt so lost, ever. It’s like the string that was holding me to the ground snapped, and now I’m just…floating away._

“Mac?”

He hadn’t realized he’d stumbled—he was leaning against Bozer, his friend’s arms around his waist, holding him upright.

“Let’s get you to medical,” Bozer declared.

Mac shook his head, “No, I’m okay.”

“You are _not_ okay—”

Mac straightened, forcing his body to hold its own weight, pulling away from Bozer and locking his knees to stay balanced. “I’m fine,” he insisted. “I want to see it.”

“What? The weapon?”

Mac nodded. “I…I _need_ to see it.”

_Let Codex have the weapon…let nature take its course._

“Dude, you’re…you’re shaking, Mac,” Bozer carefully grasped his arm.

Mac shifted out of his grip, forcing himself to move forward on hollow legs. He could do this. He’d survived worse. Concussive bomb blasts in the desert. Gunshot wounds. Falling from airplanes. Beaten, stabbed, waterboarded with nitrogen. This wasn’t even close to—

“Easy.” Bozer was suddenly next to him, one hand at his back, the other at his arm, guiding him.

He wanted to thank his friend for not pushing him to go to medical, for at least accepting—even if he didn’t understand—that he needed to see this weapon. He needed to see this through. See what DXS had known, what his father had known. See what Codex was willing to kill for. What he’d almost died for.

What his mom thought could save the world.

They waited back in the lab, Mac silently sipping a large, electrolyte-rich drink, an ice pack on the back of his neck to help with the headache. Matty had slipped one of the medics back in to have him check out Mac’s bruised head, and it didn’t take long to recognize a concussion. Mac had simply accepted the diagnosis and the small packet of pain meds, knowing there wasn’t much else he could do but rest.

When Riley, Desi, and Russ returned with Tesla’s weapon, Mac felt something in his chest release. Desi started toward him, but paused, frowning at the ice pack, then rotated to help Russ set Shiva on top of the table that had been cleared for it. Mac watched her uncertainty, unable to pinpoint why it didn’t bother him more.

_“She doesn’t understand, does she?”_

The voice was close, a mouth practically at his ear. He flinched, looking over his shoulder, confused to see nothing but a wall behind him.

_“She doesn’t realize how close the answer is.”_

He startled as the voice shifted, moving to his other ear, like a sweep of a stereo. The most disconcerting part…it was _his_ voice he was hearing. And not like the little voice in his head, the one to help him think through the equations and find the missing pieces of whatever puzzle he was scrambling to solve.

No, this was _his voice_.

Before he could process what that meant, Riley was asking him what it was like to get lost inside his head and for a moment, he could only stare at her. Stare at her and wonder if he’d gotten out. If _this_ was real…or if _that_ had been.

“It was…surreal,” he repeated, feeling Bozer’s eyes on him. It was the only word that worked. The only thing he had in him.

Matty ordered them to all get some rest and Mac nodded, pushing away from the table. He felt his body sway once more, unable to pick a direction, a purpose. The relief at feeling Bozer step up close to him and drag his arm across his shoulder was so visceral it made him shudder.

“I got you,” Bozer said quietly enough none of the heads around them turned.

Mac nodded weakly. He couldn’t remember having ever been this tired—and he’d once stayed awake for over 72 hours on a mission with Jack. He ignored the voices swimming around him—he honestly couldn’t tell which were real and which he was simply remembering. Sinking gratefully down into Bozer’s passenger seat, he closed his eyes and let his head drop back against the seat.

He just needed a minute. Just needed to rest his eyes for a minute, that was all.

“Hey, man.” Bozer was shaking his shoulder. “We’re here.”

Mac opened his eyes, his vision swimming a bit in front of him. They were parked out in front of his house.

“What’d you, like…teleport here?” Mac muttered, fumbling for the door handle.

“You were _out_ , man,” Bozer informed him. “I even blasted Run DMC and you didn’t blink.”

Mac huffed. “That’s nothing,” he sighed, finally getting a grip on the handle, and pushing the door open. “Jack used to make us sleep to Metallica.”

He stumbled out of the car and leaned his shoulder against the front door, staggering inside as it opened.

“You need anything, man?”

Mac shook his head.

He just wanted to sleep for about ten years. He continued back to his room without bothering to close the front door. He was pretty sure Bozer followed him back to the room, but he didn’t check; he found his bed on instinct alone, falling face-first across the blanket-strewn mattress. He felt a sort of tug at his feet and registered Bozer removing his boots, but then slid into a darkness so quiet and welcoming, he couldn’t have resisted if he wanted to.

The next thing he was aware of was waking to cool sheets pressed against his face. He groaned as he rolled over, stiff and sore, apparently not having moved once while he was asleep. He felt gritty and hot, like he’d been rolled in sand and stuffed onto a shelf for several days.

He clambered from his bed in a messy tangle of limbs, tugging his clothes off and leaving them tossed on the floor in his wake as he made his way to the shower. The hot water felt like bliss, skimming down the valley of his spine as he leaned his forehead against the tiled wall. He closed his eyes and breathed the steam in slowly.

 _If he finds you…it’s over_.

Gasping, Mac jerked back from the wall, shoving his wet hair from his eyes, and looking wildly around the empty bathroom. She’d been afraid of him.

He shuddered, remembering.

She’d been afraid…of _him_.

He washed quickly, toweling off everything but his hair, then dressing quickly, thinking only to get outside. Open air. The stars.

Something that anchored him in _now_. In _real_.

As he stepped out of his room, though, he could smell the enticing aroma of broth and spices emanating from the kitchen. Desi stood at his stove, a tall, stainless-steel pot that he didn’t even remember owning before her, a large wooden spoon in her hand as she stirred the concoction. She looked…like home, he thought. Like she was _at_ home in his kitchen.

Making him soup.

With a tired smile, he approached her, thinking only to wrap his arms around her and pull her against him, comforting himself with her closeness. But then the shadows in his periphery drew close, their motion catching his attention, and he glanced outside to his deck.

Someone was standing on the other side of the closed doors, staring at him through the paned windows. And somehow, impossibly, it was _him_.

He was staring back inside, a devilish smirk pulling the corner of his mouth upwards. And for a moment, Mac could see both—inside out, outside in.

“Hey, there you are,” Desi’s voice pulled his eyes forward. She was smiling at him, her eyes soft and safe. “I was just about to wake you up for a concussion check.”

“Yeah, I’m…,” he glanced outside once more at the… _not_ -him standing on the other side of the glass, staring at him. Challenging him. “I’m good.”

“Feel like some soup?” Desi asked reaching for him, grasping his wrist, and drawing him forward until he was flush against her, the powerful muscles of her strong body melding with him in a swift hug.

“Uh, sure,” he replied, forcing himself to focus on her. “Soup sounds…,” he glanced back at the door to the deck, “sounds good.”

“You okay?” Desi asked, concern coloring her tone.

Not-him smiled, an expression full of terrifying truth. Mac suppressed a shiver.

“You bet,” he replied, painting a smile he didn’t feel on his face before pressing his lips to her forehead.

He wasn’t, though.

He would never be ‘okay’ again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Present Day—after the Griffith Observatory**

**_Mac_ **

**_**_ **

Mornings were rarely silent, especially in Los Angeles. Car horns and airplanes competed with the coo of mourning doves and the hum of electrical wires.

Mac could remember waking several mornings when serving in Afghanistan to the sound of prayer calls or hear the unfamiliar chime of church bells when on mission with Jack in various countries. He could remember jolting awake to unexpected gunfire, or the hum of accented voices.

The quiet that greeted him this morning shot panic through him unlike anything before. He jolted into consciousness, his hands spread flat against the sheets, breath hammering through parted lips. He could feel his pulse at the base of his throat, threatening to choke him. And for almost a full minute he couldn’t remember where he was, what day it was, if anyone was near him.

After a moment, he was able to get control of his breathing and blink the bleariness from his vision, looking around.

His room. His bed. He still wasn’t sure what day it was, but…it had been a busy week.

He pushed himself upright, his body feeling bruised—especially his chest. He pressed his fingers flat against his bare skin, looking down, surprised to see only the familiar landscape of old scars and no new wounds. He could have sworn—

_“I can’t…I can’t breathe….”_

He gasped at the memory—the air being sucked from the room, and Lasky walking in. Only, wait…that wasn’t a _memory_ …it was a dream, right? It hadn’t actually _happened_. Not outside of his own head in any case.

“Hello?” he called, his voice echoing back to him against the silence. “Des?”

He held still, listening. Nothing. He was alone.

Grinding the heel of his hands into his eyes, he took a slow breath, trying unsuccessfully to slow his heartrate. He couldn’t seem to get his adrenaline to back down—his fingers were shaking, his eyes twitching, even his stomach felt fluttery. It was like coming down off the high he’d get when he properly diffused an IED.

Pushing back his blankets, he swung his legs over the side of his bed, surprised to see that he was dressed in a loose-fitting pair of boxer shorts. He didn’t remember putting them on the night before. He remembered the soup, and climbing into bed next to Desi, and then…something about…stars?

“Jesus Christ, Mac, get it together,” he growled at himself, rubbing a hand roughly over the top of his head. He got up and practically stomped into his bathroom for a shower.

As he glanced at the mirror he jerked back in surprise, thinking for a moment he’d seen his own reflection—fully clothed. He blinked, looked again, and no…no, he was bare-chested, wearing only boxer shorts. He stared at his reflection, the bruise along his forehead, the bags of weariness under his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks, the old scars on his shoulder and torso.

This was real.

He looked at his hands, recalling the disconnected feeling of them belonging to someone else. He rubbed the pad of his thumb along the tips of his fingers.

This was _real_.

Shaking his head, he took a breath, turned toward the shower, shucked his boxers, and stepped under the hot water.

“Don’t think about yesterday,” he ordered himself, water scattering from his lips as he raised his face to the water. “Put it aside. It doesn’t matter anymore. We got the weapon. We beat Codex.”

 _For now_ , his rebellious conscience retaliated.

“You got work to do,” he concluded, mentally shoving the doubt and confusion he felt upon waking this morning into a box inside of him and slamming the lid shut.

As he dried off, he ruefully wished he could stuff the aches and pains inside that same box, but apparently, they were planning on sticking around for a while. As he tugged on a pair of cargo pants and looked for a Henley, he had to acknowledge that concussions had an adverse effect on the body—and he _should_ be taking it easy. But his racing pulse wasn’t inclined to let him.

He fastened his watch to his wrist, taking a moment to glance at the face and almost choked. 10:42am. No wonder the house was silent—Desi and Riley had left hours ago. He looked at his watch again, seeking the date. Thursday.

Now that Shiva was secured, Matty was probably going to have them focus on that bio-robotics conference she’d mentioned—before the emergency at the plant…before Lasky.

Mac felt his heart pick up speed and his head spun. He leaned forward, grabbing the back of his desk chair for balance, and tried to catch his breath. Closing his eyes, he pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting for control over his body. He felt strangely like he was on the verge of a panic attack, but he hadn’t had one of those since…hell, before Jack left.

And he didn’t want to have one now. Not without his Overwatch to talk him down. He’d probably pass out.

“Get a grip,” he growled at himself. Focus on facts. Facts were impenetrable. Inarguable. Solid. _Real_. “Okay, the target heart rate during moderately intense activities is about 70% of maximum heart rate,” he reminded himself, pressing two fingers against his throat at his pulse point, counting. “Holy shit.”

He probably should explore the after-effects of the DARPA drug on his nervous system. He knew psychotropic and psychedelic drugs have been shown to have some gnarly effects on mental state. And it wasn’t as if he was thinking incredibly clearly in the moment.

Grabbing his wallet and keys from his desk, he headed out of his room, musing over an article he remembered reading once where the use of DMT in lab rats had shown an increase in neuroplasticity, promoting the formation of new neural connections or synapses. Would be nice if the outcome of the headache currently raging behind his eyes was the ability to get to a solution faster. Save more people.

As he entered the quiet kitchen, he saw a plate filled with muffins and a tented note next to it. Picking it up, he frowned in puzzlement: this was Bozer’s handwriting.

_Figured you’d be beat after that midnight run to Griffiths—made you some blueberry muffins. We got you covered with Matty. Take a personal day._

“Midnight run to—?”

The words choked off in his throat as he darted a look over to the paned glass door leading to the deck. The house was still empty, but he could have sworn he’d seen someone. And what was this about the Griffith Observatory? He hadn’t been there in years. Not since…DXS days, really. Was Bozer leaving him a code for something?

He rubbed at his bruised skin. His head hurt too bad for this. He needed to get to work, get focused.

Get coffee.

Checking his cabinets, Mac cursed his luck—or perhaps his friends—for his lack of caffeine. No matter, he’d just pick some up along the way. He took one of Bozer’s muffins to steady his rolling stomach, dry-swallowed four Advil and headed to his rented car. As he pulled out of his neighborhood, he rolled down his side window, feeling the confines of the car against his still-racing pulse.

As he merged into traffic, he checked his rear-view mirror—and shouted in surprise.

There was a man sitting in his backseat. A man who looked alarming like him.

He jerked his steering wheel, startled, and craned a look over his shoulder…except no one was there.

“What the hell?” Mac muttered, correcting his path in the wake of the protesting horns in L.A. traffic. “Forget it,” he practically panted. “You’re just tired. That’s all. Your eyes are playing tricks. It’s okay,” he swallowed, dragging the back of his hand across his sweat-beaded forehead. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

Maybe the coffee wasn’t the best idea after all. He didn’t think his system needed more reasons to wreak havoc on him. He decided to head directly to the Phoenix parking garage, voice-texting Riley to check in. She replied reassuringly quickly that she and Russ were in the lab working on Sparky with Bozer and Desi was at a debrief with Matty.

He nodded. This was good. Lab work was good.

Pulling into a parking spot next to Bozer’s car, Mac got out, the slam of his door echoing in the eerie quiet of the underground structure. He headed to the bank of elevators, marking his movement in the reflection of the mirrored walls, jerking to a halt when he saw an image that was decidedly _not-_ him staring back at him from the stainless-steel elevators.

Except that it _was_ him.

_You should be hiding. He’s looking for you…._

Mac stumbled back a step.

_And if he finds you, it’s all over. You won’t be able to stop it._

“Just a synapse misfiring,” Mac muttered, rubbing at his bruised head.

“You really believe that?” _Not_ -him replied, no longer a reflection.

Mac turned around ready to walk away but was still faced with himself—except this time the _other_ him wasn’t dressed like Elliot Ness, but instead wore a pair of jeans and his MIT t-shirt, looking for all the world like he had before Afghanistan. When he hadn’t had to work so hard to believe in the innate goodness of people.

Which is why the cynical expression and twisted grin looked so off-center on his face.

“Get the hell out of here!” Mac demanded.

“And go where?” The Other replied. “You know as well as I do, you can’t escape yourself.”

Mac rolled his eyes. “Seriously? That’s a little trite for Id.”

The Other’s eyebrows bounced up, his lips folding down in expression Mac knew was his version of _if that’s the way you want to play it_. “You sure I’m not Ego?”

“Moral conscience?” Mac scoffed, turning away once more, but this time only to move closer to the reflective wall and lean. “I don’t think so. You’re hidden memories, all the way.”

“Not so hidden now, though, am I?” The Other shrugged, stuffing his hands in his pockets and suddenly Mac realized he was no longer dressed in jeans but in fatigues, his dog tags reflecting the overhead light off the muted tan of his t-shirt.

Sighing, Mac pushed away from the wall. “Just go away,” he almost pleaded, heading toward the elevator bank once more. “You’re just a…a memory hangover from that DARPA drug. Not real. You’re just part of my subconscious.”

“If I’m not real, then make me go away.”

Mac sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Believe me, I’m trying.”

“What are you even doing here?” The Other demanded, drawing Mac’s eyes back to him with a frown. He was now dressed in a bomb dispersal suit, only the protective headgear was missing.

“I _work_ here,” Mac shot back.

The Other shook his head, looking disgusted. “Doing _what_ exactly? Making air scrubbers? Hoping recycling makes a difference?”

Mac felt his brows pull together over the bridge of his nose. “I’m making a difference—saving people! Stopping terrorists and organizations who want to…to _hurt_ people.”

“Are you, though?” The Other challenged, his hair a bit longer now, dressed in cargo pants and a button-down shirt. “Because…you’ve been doing that for a while now and the world is just getting worse. People are still dying. The air and water are still polluted. The ozone layer is still thinning. The earth is literally burning up around us.”

Mac felt his hands begin to shake. “We have to start somewhere.”

“You’re fighting an uphill battle,” The Other shrugged. “You know it and I know it. And _she_ knew it.”

At that, Mac felt his pulse surge. “Don’t talk about her.”

“Why? She was mine, too.”

Mac stepped forward, shoving both hands against The Other’s chest. “Just… _back off._ ”

The Other stumbled slightly, but then came forward with a self-satisfied smirk. “She knew that the only way to save this world was to ease the pressure humanity was placing upon it.”

“No,” Mac shook his head. “There’s always another way.”

“Think about it, though,” The Other challenged, stepping forward with enough energy that Mac stumbled back. “Think about what would happen if, say, the population of India simply stopped driving their cars or operating their factories. The earth would _heal itself_. The air would become cleaner in days, clear in weeks—”

“No,” Mac shot back, pushing at his other self once more. “You’re talking about sacrificing the few for the sake of the many—”

“You mean, like you did with Lasky?” The Other lifted an eyebrow.

Mac froze. “I…I had to do that…,” he swallowed the sudden surge of nausea that accompanied the spike of pain that shot through his head. “I didn’t have a choice, otherwise—”

“Everyone else would die,” The Other replied, for one moment looking at him with sympathy. His hair was shorter again, his attire more-closely matching what Mac wore. It was almost like looking at a true reflection of himself in that moment. “You had to sacrifice Lasky to save everyone else.”

“It’s not the same thing,” Mac replied. “You’re twisting my words around.”

“Am I, though?” The Other replied, with a raised brow. “Or are you just not willing to look at the big picture. You’re always so sold on being the hero. The savior. Finding possible solutions to impossible situations—depending on your best friends, Facts and Science, to get you out of every jam you’ve ever gotten yourself into.”

Mac blinked, unable to respond, because…yes.

The Other stepped forward, eyes so close to him Mac could see the shades of blue and gray intermingling to create a unique blend of color. “And all I’m saying is that Facts and Science? They’re telling you that Codex is right.”

“Mac?”

A hand touched his arm and he jerked back, gasping. For a moment, he wasn’t sure where he was, who was near. He blinked, looking blurrily around.

“Who are you talking to?”

 _Riley_. It was Riley’s hand on his arm. Riley’s voice he was hearing. Riley’s worried eyes peering up at him. He looked over his shoulder, then around himself again, seeing Bozer and Russ standing on either side of a disengaged Sparky, both staring at him with confusion and worry.

“N-no one,” he said, realizing belatedly that he hadn’t answered Riley’s question. “Just…y’know, working some stuff out in my head.”

The Other version of himself was gone. And he was standing in the doorway of the Phoenix lab. With zero memory of having left the parking garage. To say he wasn’t worried would not only be a lie, it would be a serious sign of a mental breakdown.

Which he was absolutely _not_ having.

“Seriously, guys, I’m fine,” Mac said, plastering on a smile that tried valiantly to reach his eyes.

“You shouldn’t even be here, man,” Bozer said, coming around from behind the robot to stand near Mac. “After yesterday, and then last night—”

Mac frowned. “Yeah, what was up with that code about the Griffith Observatory?”

Bozer blinked, shooting an unreadable look at Riley.

“Code?” Bozer asked, face pulled tight in a frown of worry. “No code, man. You…you don’t remember?”

Mac realized that Riley hadn’t removed her hand from his arm when he felt her fingers flex.

“Mac…,” she said softly, her eyes narrowing slightly in that way she had that somehow conveyed wariness and concern at once. “Bozer _found_ you at the Observatory last night.”

Mac drew his head back. “Found me?”

Bozer nodded. “You ran off—you remember watching the falling stars?”

“There’s no such things as falling—”

Bozer waved a hand, “Yeah, yeah, comet trails, I got it. You gave me this lesson last night.”

Mac felt his heart began to hammer at the base of his throat once more. He didn’t remember anything about leaving the house, much less ending up at the Griffith Observatory. He pulled in a slow breath, dismayed to hear it tremble as he exhaled.

“Look, okay, maybe I’m a little shaky,” he allowed. “Yesterday was…rough.”

“Hell yeah, it was,” Bozer commented, crossing his arms over his chest.

“But I’m okay,” Mac reassured them, his hands out in front of him, both in a gesture of sincerity…and to keep them from getting too close. The air was getting tight. “And I really was just…working out a problem…kinda got caught up in the moment.”

Riley lifted her chin, dark eyes staring into his as though trying to see inside the many, many boxes in his mind.

“I think maybe you should tell Matty,” she said. “No one would blame you if you took a couple days off, Mac.”

The idea of time alone—with nothing and no one by his own thoughts—shot terror through Mac.

“That’s totally unnecessary,” he stepped away from them, shrugging off Riley’s hand, and moved over to where Sparky lay back in the chair Mac had vacated just yesterday. Russ hadn’t said a word; he’d simply watched the exchange, an edge to his expression Mac didn’t really like…but couldn’t shake off. “I just need a project is all. And this biologics conference is a perfect distraction.”

“Yes,” Russ intoned, stretching the word out as if he were trying to taste it, eyes still on Mac. “I think you may be right about that. A distraction.”

Mac grinned, hoping at least one of them was buying his act. He gestured toward Russ as he turned to take in his two friends. “See? Now…catch me up. How far have we gotten?”

After two more beats of doubt, Bozer approached and began to walk through the progress they’d made so far. The conference was for biochemical engineers—Russ and Matty had gotten wind of it thanks to a whistleblower from Aegis Pharmaceuticals. Apparently, there was a very real possibility one of the chemical engineers had plagiarized a theory for recognition and the company was basing a new biologic medication on it—potentially earning the company millions…and putting thousands of lives in danger.

Mac and Bozer were slated to attend the conference—using Sparky as their cover of a biometric robotic replacement for human clinical trials—flush out the engineer and get proof of his corner-cutting before the drug went public.

 _Saving_ people. Making the world a better place. One beat at a time.

Mac listened to Bozer’s report, his mind already four steps ahead to what they needed to adjust Sparky’s programming—and gather the intel. He grabbed a blue Sharpie from the table behind Russ and began to jot down equations and notes on the window, talking them through his thinking as he did so.

It was comforting to lose himself in the science. In quadradic equations and formulas. In bouncing ideas off Russ and sharing hypothesis with Bozer and asking Riley to do the impossible with a computer motherboard.

When he ran out of window space, he moved to the shiny surface of the spare work table, writing backwards so that the formulas appeared correctly in the mirror above their heads and the others could see what he was doing from where they worked.

“DaVinci did that, you know,” Russ mentioned in a rather off-handed tone.

“What, cover every reflective surface with colored marker?” Riley teased, but it brought Mac’s head around.

He hadn’t really registered he was studiously ignoring his own reflection in any surface until her words.

Russ chuckled, flipping the torque wrench in his hand around like a small sword. “Mirrored writing,” he replied. “Speculation was it was part of his paranoia—not wanting anyone to be able to steal his ideas.”

Mac shook his head, his brows pulled low. “That wasn’t it,” he said, straightening up. “DaVinci was left-handed. His mind just…it worked so fast, he couldn’t always write fast enough to keep up,” the Sharpie balanced between two fingers, Mac illustrated by gesturing around his own head in rotating circles, “so he used the mirrored writing style to prevent him from smudging his ink.”

Riley tilted her head back and lifted an eyebrow as she gestured to Mac’s hands. “Doesn’t seem to work the same for modern-day markers.”

Mac pulled his head back, confused for a moment, before he looked at his hands, the tips of his fingers and base of his thumb now a dark blue. He huffed an amused laugh. “I’m sure his hands were a mess,” he mused, then looked back at his formulas, glancing up into the mirror before hastily looking away. “But his sketches and writings weren’t.” He grinned, then bounced his chin toward the mirror without looking at it. “You guys can get what you need with that, right?”

“You know, the cleaning crew around here must love you,” Bozer chuckled. “Or hate you….”

“I don’t know,” Riley leaned back over her computer, glancing up at the mirror and capturing the information she needed into her programming code, “maybe it’s like _Good Will Hunting_ …the next genius is just waiting to be discovered.”

“That would only work if our _current_ genius could ever leave a formula incomplete,” Russ mentioned sardonically, an eyebrow raised in Mac’s direction as he moved some equipment out of the way to expose another tabletop.

“I heard that,” Mac shot back over his shoulder.

Russ shrugged; lips twisted in an indulgent grin. “You were meant to.”

They spent hours adjusting and designing, programming Sparky to gauge the efficacy of the biologic formulas presented at the conference and suddenly, the entire day was gone. Mac did his best to not obsess about covering every reflective surface—and thought he was doing okay, until Riley frowned at him for rather forcefully closing the lid on a darkened laptop.

“Sorry,” he offered her an apologetic half-smile, but no further explanation.

“Okay, so…,” Riley kept her eyes on him for a moment longer than he really thought necessary. He’d said he was sorry, hadn’t he? She let her chin lead her gaze to the others in the room. “I’ve planted file sweepers and remote sensors in Sparky’s ocular and auditory pathways. Which means, basically, that I can monitor you guys 360 degrees, 24/7, as long as he’s operating.”

“That’s awesome, Ri,” Bozer grinned at her.

“If…a little excessive,” Mac folded his brows, ignoring the dull ache that had started a few hours ago and continued to build behind his eyes. “I mean, Boze and I’ll both be there—do you need to monitor… _everything_?”

Riley leveled her eyes on him, and Mac registered he may have woken a sleeping dragon.

“Yes, I do,” she replied, gently closing her laptop, and crossing her arms to sink back against her chair and regard him solemnly. “I’m worried about you.”

Mac scoffed. “This is probably the milkiest milk run we’ve had since…Russ started the Phoenix back up,” he replied. He wasn’t even sure why he was arguing—he just knew they didn’t trust him right now, and it rattled him. “Get in, get out, get on with our lives.”

“Mac,” Bozer huffed, packing up the extra components and wires in a soft, foldable bag he kept in a locker with Sparky’s name on it. “Nothing is a milk run with you, man.”

“That’s not true,” Mac retorted, slightly stung by the implication.

“Yes, it is,” the Other said, suddenly standing between Bozer and Riley. Mac jerked, startled, staring at him…self. He wore the same clothes as Mac, his hair the same length. He even had a bruise on his forehead. “You know that every time you go out there, leading the way with Facts and Science as your weapons, you put your friends in danger.”

“Mac?” Riley called him, leaning forward.

“Y-yeah,” Mac tore his eyes from the image of the Other, tracking to Riley, trying desperately _not_ to see him wandering behind her, arms crossed over his chest.

“And if you could just…get rid of the right people…you wouldn’t have to protect them anymore,” the Other offered, lifting one hand in a sort of shrug.

Mac felt his incredulity surge forward. “And how do you figure out who the ‘right people’ are, huh?”

“What are you talking about, man?” Bozer asked, drawing Mac’s startled eyes. “Right people for what?”

Mac darted his gaze from Bozer to Riley to Russ to the other side of the lab. “N-nothing,” he tried. The Other was gone. But the anxiety he left behind like an aftertaste on Mac’s heart was strong. “Sorry, I was just…thinking.”

Riley lifted an eyebrow. “And _that’s_ why we are monitoring all frequencies, all the time.”

Mac sighed. “Fine, okay,” he lifted his hands in surrender. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Riley narrowed her eyes. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, letting him off that particular hook. “But I still think you should tell Matty you’re feeling off.”

“I’m not feeling _off_ ,” Mac argued.

Bozer chuffed. “Dude, you’re not feeling ‘on’ either, that much is obvious.”

“I’m fine,” Mac snapped, irritation fueled by his ever-present headache thinning his patience. “I’ll just…go home, get some rest. Be right as rain tomorrow.”

Riley and Bozer nodded, but Russ simply stared at him. It was…disconcerting. Mac waved at them with blue-stained fingers and headed down to his car, keeping his eyes stubbornly on his feet, not willing to catch a glimpse of himself—either versions—in the reflection of the elevator bank. He didn’t check his mirrors as he drove home, he simply operated on autopilot, crediting the lateness of the hour with arriving at his home in once piece based on the typical no-holes-barred traffic that L.A. was semi-famous for.

As he approached his front door, the exhaustion that had been hunting him down caught up with him and he found himself barely able to steady his hand enough to get the key in the lock. He stumbled inside, casting a glance toward his bedroom and gauged the distance to be too far.

Instead, he shoved the front door closed, dragged himself inside, and face-planted on the living room couch, hollowed-out, empty, and trembling with fatigue.

* * *

**_Desi_ **

**_**_ **

She’d never really been good at emotion. Hers…or anyone else’s.

In some respects, she suspected that was what initially connected her and Mac. Well, that, _and_ basic human biological attraction. The man was appealing.

Desi was a soldier. And a proud Vietnamese American.

She’d had to work three times as hard as anyone else to gain the respect of her peers—not only for her gender and race, but for her size. It was difficult for some of her fellow soldiers to respect, and trust, all three. Something about that fight had turned a lot of the natural softness inside her into steel.

She didn’t trust easily and didn’t allow emotion to infiltrate her walls for just any reason. But somehow, Angus MacGyver had become her exception.

Jack Dalton had warned her.

Had predicted she would want to fall for Mac, but not to let herself. Had said Mac needed someone to watch his six, someone he could trust to not walk away, because too many had— _including_ Jack. And she’d seen that firsthand in the first few months of this job. She’d found herself alternating between exasperated, protective, impressed, and finally…smitten.

He exuded a confidence and intelligence that made her trust him. But there was a breakability about him. A sense that she could truly shatter him with a well-placed word.

Desi knew she felt something for Mac she hadn’t felt in a long, _long_ time…but she also knew there was a good reason they split up earlier that year. And the only reason she could find for them to be back together now was that…they didn’t have anyone else.

She really hadn’t found someone as beautiful as Mac—both inside and out. And she’d looked. A _lot_.

He had a quality she wanted to be near. Something that made her feel stronger. More worthy. She was simply a better human when she was around him, and she found that _very_ attractive.

The thing was…Mac’s loneliness could suffocate her if she let it.

He would never admit to it, but he _was_ fragile. Like a bomb. He had been abandoned by so many people who claimed to care for him, or were supposed to care for him, he now approached life with an unconscious tension as though he was waiting for the inevitable explosion that would end everyone and everything he ever knew.

Desi had enough of her own issues; taking on Mac’s? She was tough, but not _that_ tough.

She knew it was only a matter of time before he became too much. Still…she couldn’t quit him. She’d never been good at that.

That was why, after a day full of debriefing and speculation with Matty, she decided to swing by Mac’s house on her way home to a well-earned glass of Scotch and maybe a bubble bath. Not that she’d ever admit to enjoying such things. She did have a reputation to keep up after all.

She checked in with Riley before she headed to his house and learned that the other woman wasn’t there at the moment but was relieved to hear that Desi was going to check in on Mac.

Apparently, Desi wasn’t the only one who’d had her heart leap from her chest watching him twist in pain the day prior.

Besides…if she didn’t at least _attempt_ to fix Mac, Bozer was going to call Jack and she did _not_ want to deal with facing that man right now. Not about this. Regardless of the fact he’d left and—for reasons she didn’t understand—decided not to return, she still owed him, and this was not how she planned on repaying that debt.

Desi pulled up to the house, parking behind Mac’s rented car, and headed inside, her key turning easily in the lock. Before she’d even fully opened the door, she could hear his voice. For a moment, she thought he was on the phone, but then realized he sounded rough, pained, and not at all _him_.

Was he…dreaming? He’d sounded like this during a few rough nightmares.

Moving fully into the house, Desi closed the door behind her, casting a quick glance down the hall toward Mac’s room, but then realized the voice was coming from the living room. She dropped her bag in the hallway and made her way to through the darkened hall toward where a single lamp illuminated the living room with a yellow-hued glow.

At first, she couldn’t find him, but then he cried out, almost in protest, and she spied him across the room near the fireplace, his back against the wall. She blinked, staring in naked surprise as he glared at the empty space before him, his hands up as though he were warding off something, or holding someone back.

“You’re _wrong_ ,” he cried out, making her jump with the ferocity of his tone. “She wouldn’t do that. She _couldn’t_!”

“Mac?” she called, her voice shaking slightly in reaction to the unreal scene playing out before her.

He didn’t react to her voice, his eyes wide, heated, and trained to a spot in front of him that was apparently causing him to look more distraught than she’d ever seen. As she looked closer, she could see his pupils were dilated to a point she could barely see any blue.

“Mac!” She called and this time he flinched violently, swaying against the wall, and nearly losing his balance.

His shoulder hit the stone edge of the hearth next to him and he blinked rapidly, looking around until his gaze hit Desi and she felt a pang in her chest at the confused fear she saw in his expression.

“Wh-what are you…doing here?” he asked, his voice trembling as he pushed himself up against the wall, his palms leaving sweaty streaks in their wake, blue stain from his fingers transferring to the paint on the wall.

“I came to check on you,” she said softly, approaching him carefully.

He was shaking, she could see now. Fine tremors coursed through his hands, running up his arms until his chin began to tremble in reaction.

Her gut clenched; a biological reaction she’d worked very hard to train herself _not_ to feel when dealing with someone she was assigned to protect.

But this was _Mac_.

She’d both covered his six and laid helpless and sated in his arms. She seen him lose himself inside of her and lose himself to the terror of a nightmare. She’d seen the confidence-shattering effects of his barely managed PTSD and the assured way he dismantled a bomb meant to obliterate hundreds.

She’d lost her objectivity in this case and just wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him until all the broken pieces she could see in his eyes fit back together again inside of him.

“Mac?”

“I’m…I need to…need to get out of here…f-for a bit,” he said, pushing himself to trembling stance, still leaning against the wall.

He looked _rough_. Like he’d not slept for days. She needed to find a way to get him to sit down without physically overpowering him. She was pretty sure if she touched him in this moment he’d come apart.

“How about we get some food first, huh?” she suggested. “When’s the last time you ate something?”

His eyes tracked to her then and she saw confusion narrow the blown pupils. “What are you…talking about?” he asked, looking sincerely puzzled. “We just had soup.”

Desi blinked in surprise, taking a full step back as she processed what he said. “Babe…that was _last night_.”

Mac looked at her and something inside her broke at the disorientation she saw ghosting his expression.

“What?”

“We had soup last night,” she repeated, trying to stomp on the panic his broken tone churned up inside her.

Mac blinked, looking around his living room. “Right. Right, I knew that,” he said quietly, then ran a shaking hand through his tangled blond hair. “It’s just us here. It’s just us here, right now.”

She couldn’t tell if he were asking her or trying to reassure himself, so she took a chance. “That’s right, babe. It’s just us here right now.”

He shook his head. “I gotta get out of here.”

“Mac, no,” she stepped forward at that, reaching for him. He side-stepped her reaching hands and made his way around the edge of the living room toward the front door. “Wait, Mac, no. Stay here. Stay with me.”

“I’m fine,” he said distractedly. “I just need some air—it’s too…it’s too small in here. I need some…I need to see…there’s not enough air in here.”

“Mac!” she pivoted and hurried after him, but he’d already reached the front door.

By the time she’d caught up to him he was through the door and out on the gravel driveway, his long legs outdistancing her. He wasn’t dressed in running clothes, but he took off in any case, impressively expanding the distance with them in a few strides.

“Son of a bitch,” she muttered, running a hand through her hair. She bit her lip, then pulled her phone out and dialed Matty. When the former director picked up, Desi began talking before Matty could identify herself. “I want to know what you gave him.”

_“I’m sorry?”_

“What the hell was in that experiment fucking drug besides DMT, Matty?”

_“You know I can’t—”_

“Bull. Shit.” Desi made her voice hard. She’d interrogated men twice her size. Men who could snap her neck with one hand. Men a hell of a lot meaner than Matilda Webber. She was going to get her answer. “You realize we may have broken him, right? Our most important asset—smartest operative—and we may have broken him to get to information that we could have figured out _on our own_ with a little more time?”

_“If he hadn’t remembered—”_

“I repeat, _bullshit_. I was in those tunnels, Matty. Fifteen more minutes and we’d have figured out the answer was to turn the hell around. And we _still_ put him through that!”

She was shouting now, but she didn’t care. Matty hadn’t seen that lost look in Mac’s eyes. The look that said he was falling and knew his safety strap had been cut and there wasn’t a net beneath him. They’d left him untethered, unsupported, and he knew it.

He _felt_ it. And he was spinning away from them.

“We’re going to _lose_ him, Matty.”

The line was silent for almost a full minute. Desi lived four lifetimes in that minute.

 _“Give me ten minutes,”_ Matty replied, and then the line went dead.

Desi rubbed her face. Should she go after him? Where would he have gone? She realized that in all the time she’d been _with_ Mac, there was still a great deal they didn’t know about each other. She didn’t know his habits, his safe spaces. Not like Jack had.

Of course, Jack hadn’t been sleeping with him, either, so there was that.

She knew Mac on levels his other friends never would. She knew what he looked like—what he _sounded_ like—in the pockets of time he let himself lose control. She’d been woken by his nightmares, from those that jolted him soundlessly alert to those that left him with muscles frozen and sheets damp with sweat to those that had him shouting aware, scaring her into a near-panic attack with the veracity of his unconscious fear.

There was a level of trust granted when two people slept together—sexual or otherwise—and they’d given that to each other. She could use that now…if she could only figure out _how_. Before she could get much further, her phone buzzed. Looking down at the text from Matty, she scrolled through the contents in the drug administered to Mac. Much of it she didn’t recognize—outside of DMT—until she reached _argyreia nervosa_.

“Holy shit, Mac,” she breathed. He was definitely experiencing an extended trip, that was for sure. She then dialed Bozer. “Hey,” she greeted when he answered the phone. “Sorry to keep using you as my own personal help line, but, uh…Mac ran off again. I think I know how I can help him…I just gotta find him first.”

 _“Stay there, I’ll be right over,”_ Bozer told her.

She hung up and went to the kitchen, pulling down some of the teas and ingredients she’d stocked in Mac’s cabinets. Her family may have used soup to drown their emotions, but they also knew a thing or two about healing teas—her grandmother, in particular.

Maybe…if she could get him back to her…maybe she could actually help him. Maybe she could make a difference.

* * *

**_Bozer_ **

**_**_ **

“Leave it to Mac to not repeat himself,” Bozer grumbled as they exited the empty parking lot of the Griffith Observatory. “He’s not anywhere obvious.”

“Maybe he headed back to the house?” Desi suggested. “He wasn’t even wearing his running shoes.”

Bozer huffed. “That’s never stopped him before,” he muttered, worry bleeding through his words as he rotated his steering wheel smoothly to execute an easy U-turn. “When we were kids and things got tough, he’d just…run. Didn’t matter what shoes he was wearing. Like some kind of genius Forrest Gump.”

Desi chuckled. “I actually understood that reference.”

Bozer grinned, heading back toward Mac’s house. “His dad sure didn’t make it easy on him.”

“In life or death,” Desi agreed.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Bozer muttered, thinking back to the time just before they Phoenix officially disbanded. “It’s funny, y’know. His dad was our boss…all this time. Watching Mac go through,” he shook his head, “all _kinds_ of shit. For years, man. Years. But it turns out, without Mac…we weren’t a team. We weren’t…anything.” Bozer glanced over at Desi. “When Charlie died? And Mac walked? We were…nothing.”

Desi nodded. “I know,” she said quietly. “I’ve thought of that. He’s our…glue.”

“He’s more than that, though,” Bozer murmured, taking a right into Mac’s neighborhood. “He’s our reason.”

“Seems like we should take better care of him, then, huh?”

Bozer glanced at her. “He got hurt even when Jack was here, y’know. It’s not all on you.”

“I know,” she replied, subdued.

“Before I even knew about all this…secret spy stuff,” Bozer shook his head, “he got beat up and captured and there’s still one mission he won’t talk about.”

“Cairo,” Desi guessed.

Bozer nodded. “I thought it was just a Jack thing, but,” he shrugged, “even without Jack here, he won’t talk about it. There’s a lot about Afghanistan he doesn’t talk about, and y’know… _that_ I get. But I guess I thought…once I was part of this with him….”

“He’d trust you?”

Bozer nodded, feeling a bit exposed by how quickly she guessed his truth.

“It’s not about trusting _you_ , Boze,” Desi tried to reassure him. “It’s about trusting himself. What he exposes when he opens that box. And if he can deal with all the shit that escapes.”

Bozer tilted his head. “Guess I get that,” he conceded. “Just wish he didn’t have to go through it alone.”

“I, uh…,” she huffed a self-conscious laugh. “I think that’s what I was supposed to be here for, but…I kinda screwed that up.”

“Naw, you didn’t—” Bozer tried to reassure her, but Desi cut him off.

“No, I did,” she smiled sadly at him. “When he had Jack, he had a…an anchor. Someone who wouldn’t let him fall.”

“Except that he did,” Bozer pointed out. He glanced over at Desi as they pulled into Mac’s driveway. He slid the gear into Park, registering her surprise. “He let Mac fall. Not when he left—I mean, I get it. He had to do that. But…,” he lifted a shoulder, “when he didn’t come back. He let Mac fall, and…our boy’s been falling ever since.”

Desi watched him, her dark eyes seeming to measure him in some unfathomable way.

“Well, then,” she exhaled, grasping the door handle, “let’s go see if we can catch him.”

They entered the house, both of a mind to search his room to see where else Mac might’ve run to, when they stopped suddenly, side-by-side, in the hallway. Mac was sprawled on the couch in the living room, his sweaty shirt twisted around him, one leg on the floor as though to balance him, tri-pod style, mouth slack, sound asleep. Bozer saw his fingers were still stained blue from earlier in the day, one hand trailing on the floor, the other collapsed across his chest.

“He shouldn’t go on that job tomorrow,” Bozer declared quietly.

A pit had started in his stomach as they drove around Mac’s usual running haunts and it only grew in size as he took in the way his friend’s lanky form suddenly appeared like a lost little boy, asleep on the couch.

“You ground him, it could make things worse,” Desi warned him. “I got the formula for the DARPA drug.”

Bozer looked at her in surprise. “What? How’d you do that?”

“I made Matty give it to me,” Desi shrugged. “Point is, I…may have some remedies that could help him balance until it works its way out of his system.”

“Ancient Chinese secret, eh?” Bozer teased.

Desi lifted an eyebrow at him. “You _do_ know I’m Vietnamese, right?”

Bozer blushed. “I was just—yeah, sorry, I mean. I was just kidding.”

Desi smiled, letting him off the hook, but her raised eyebrow indicated a clear _this once_. “I’ll keep an eye on him tonight, you take your shift tomorrow, yeah?”

Bozer nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Of course.”

“All right,” Desi took a breath, crossing her arms. “You better get some rest, then. Tomorrow’s probably going to be a big day.”

Bozer took another look at Mac’s sleeping form, then tossed a two-fingered salute to Desi before heading out. His sleep was restless, disrupted by dreams from his childhood, dreams of bombs exploding and stars falling. He awoke already tired, but knew they had a full day ahead of them—and more importantly, Mac needed him.

He wasn’t going to let his friend down now.

When he pulled up to Mac’s house the next morning, he was surprised to see the blond man stepping through the front door even before he could slide his gear shift into Park. Mac looked good, surprisingly. His usual, sunny grin lit his face and when he dropped into the passenger seat, it was to pepper Bozer with questions about the mission that gave him the feeling that Mac was once more hitting on all 42 cylinders.

Whatever Desi’s remedy had been, it must have done the trick.

They headed to the lab and picked up Sparky, the false IDs, and earpieces Riley made ready for them, then headed to the northern L.A. convention location. Bozer tried to quell the nerves that always threatened to overtake him when he was made to head out into the field and away from the safety of the lab or War Room.

As usual, his anxiety didn’t get past Mac.

“You’re going to be great, Boze,” Mac reassured him, a hand resting on his shoulder, fingertips still blue from the day before. “You know the robotics better than anyone. You just have to watch for anything…hinky.”

“Right,” Bozer nodded, watching the sea of people heading into the convention center, their booth materials balanced on carts or in heavy shoulder bags. “Hinky.”

Mac and Bozer supported Sparky between them like a drunk Frat brother, navigating a path to the booth across from Aegis Pharmaceuticals, away from the main thoroughfare of convention goers. They were in a secluded section of the building, reserved for the biopharma businesses. Four booths were set up with a small countertop-like ledges set at mid-chest height where Bozer set up both a small laptop—mostly for show, and for quick glances at the information Sparky was absorbing from their surroundings—and an unfurled cloth bag with various-sized screwdrivers and tools to adjust Sparky as needed.

They smiled politely at the two men in white lab coats—for looks, Bozer surmised, as he and Mac were dressed in jeans and button-down shirts—setting up the Aegis Pharmaceutical booth with pamphlets and TV screens. Another booth seemed to be promoting eye care and the fourth was empty.

A special pass was required to access the booths in their partitioned-off area of the convention, and a glass wall separated them from the common areas of other bio-tech companies and sales booths. Their display was purposefully simple, leading to more opportunity to monitor the mark. Once they’d situated Sparky to be able to pick up all frequencies and communications, Bozer sank down on one of the two stools behind the counterspace booth, ready to play his role.

Mid-way through the day, the eye care folks packed up shop, leaving the Phoenix team with only the Aegis crew for company.

They spent the better part of the day answering questions from visitors about a fake clinical trial robotic prototype and keeping an eye on the Aegis booth across the way. Bozer got hung up a time or two with some of the more complicated questions, but Mac stepped in and with a charming smile, guileless gaze, and science that made even the stodgiest bow-tied skeptic weak in the knees, they were able to keep up their front.

“Gotta say, man,” he clapped a hand on Mac’s shoulder as the latest booth patron stepped left their booth and stepped back through the sliding glass doors. “It’s good to have you back.”

Mac slid him a puzzled grin, his index finger on the laptop touchpad, scrolling aimlessly through the onscreen data. “I go somewhere?”

“Well, not like… _physically_ , but…you’ve been messed up for a few days,” Bozer curled his fingers into a fist, tucking it into the mitt of his other hand.

Mac’s confusion seemed to deepen, and he tilted his head in Bozer’s direction. “What are you talking about? I’m fine.”

“Well, sure,” Bozer lifted a shoulder, “you seem fine _now_ , but…I mean, dude, look at your hands.”

As Mac spread out his hands, fingertips still stained blue, a man wearing a threadbare suit carrying a briefcase stepped through the sliding glass doors and walked up to the Aegis booth, his position blocking their view of the pharma vendors they’d been subtly monitoring the entire day. He set his briefcase on the edge of the booth and leaned forward, his back to them.

Bozer ignored them for the moment, though, more interested in the puzzled way Mac was looking at his slim fingers.

“You remember how all that ink got there?” Bozer asked softly, worry spiking as Mac rubbed the pad of his thumb against the tips of his fingers.

Mac shook his head slowly.

“You covered the lab with formulas using a—”

“Blue Sharpie,” Mac interrupted.

Bozer smiled, relieved. “You remember.”

Swallowing audibly, Mac shook his head again. “Not…really. But…,” he tipped his hand, palm out toward Bozer, “it looks like a blue Sharpie.”

Bozer frowned. “Wait…you _don’t_ remember? The day in the lab, all the…the left-handed DaVinci talk? None of it?”

Mac blinked at him and Bozer watched as his eyes shifted back and forth, as if watching an internal movie reel. “I mean…yeah,” he said slowly. “I…uh, sure, of course I remember the formulas and—”

His gaze seemed to dart to something just over Bozer’s shoulder, but when Bozer shot a look there to follow his gaze, he saw nothing. He turned back around to see Mac rubbing his bruised forehead, brows folded over the bridge of his nose.

“Mac, I’m legit worried about you, man.”

“Yeah,” Mac sighed. “I’m kinda worried about me, too.”

Before either of them could pull that thread further, Sparky’s monitors lit up. Mac stood, looking down at the laptop screen, eyes tracking the readout.

“Looks like Aegis is uploading their files—but not to their own server,” he glanced over at Bozer, sounding for a moment like himself again. “I think they’re selling them to that guy!”

Bozer tilted his head. “That’s bad, right?”

Mac pressed his fingertips to his ear. “Riley, you hearing this?”

 _“Every bit of it,”_ Riley replied, her voice tight.

“Can you take apart the code so I can see—”

 _“Way ahead of you,”_ Riley replied, and Bozer watched as Mac leaned closer to the screen, as though drawn in by a magnet.

Bozer stood and looked at the monitors. “What’s it mean?”

Mac frowned, shaking his head. His eyes moved restlessly, scanning the information Sparky was picking up and Riley was dissecting to show them the details.

“I mean…it _looks_ like they’re basing their formula on the theory that atoms of two different elements differ in chemical properties,” he glanced over at Bozer, “but they’ve failed to account for isobars…uh, atoms with similar masses.”

Bozer tilted his head. “You realize I have _absolutely_ no idea what you just said, right?”

Mac tossed him a side grin, and for a fraction of a second, it felt like old times. Bozer was used to not understanding a word that came out of Mac’s mouth—but if _Mac_ understood, that’s all that mattered. He was about to sink back onto his stool when he heard Mac mutter the word _Dalton._ Uncertainty obliterated his confidence and he looked from Mac’s focused gaze to their surroundings, then back again.

“Mac…Jack’s not here,” he said slowly.

Mac glanced up his blue eyes bright with concentration. “What?”

“Jack’s not here,” Bozer repeated.

“I know that,” Mac blinked. “You don’t understand—”

“Well, that much is true,” Bozer muttered.

“—these guys…they’re using Dalton’s Atomic Theory to calculate the chemical properties for their biologic, but…,” he shoved a hand thought his hair, one arm crossing over his chest, the other resting on top of it, “the theory is flawed because it doesn’t take complex organic compounds into account.”

Bozer stared at him. “Which means….”

Mac’s fingers beat an uneven rhythm against his arm. “Which means…if anyone tries to actually follow the formula they just uploaded, they’ll create…basically toxic gas.”

 _“In the form of an injectable medication,”_ Riley concluded in horror.

“Exactly,” Mac nodded, crouching behind Sparky to open his control panel.

_“Mac, I don’t think they’re selling it…I think they’re—”_

“Distributing,” Mac said softly, his eyes on what was essentially Sparky’s neurological system.

Bozer put his hand out. “Whoa, wait,” he interjected. “What are you….”

Mac’s blue-tinged fingers were flying across the wires. Bozer knew robotics, but even he couldn’t follow the swiftness in what Mac was doing. After a moment, though, Sparky’s face began to glow an electric green, mechanical eyes trained on the briefcase set up on the Aegis counter. Within seconds, Bozer saw something flashing on the case and the man standing next to it jerked away, startled.

With a cry of alarm, he looked around the secluded space they occupied, his gaze catching on Sparky’s glowing green visage and he locked eyes with Mac, charging forward.

“What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?” the man demanded, his balding head reflecting the overhead lights, his pale eyes narrowed in fury.

“I just remotely disabled your file transfer protocol,” Mac informed him, expression impassive, eyes bright with challenge.

The man looked at Sparky, then back at Mac, then whirled back to the Aegis booth to grab his briefcase and snap it open to reveal a laptop computer. Bozer hit a button and refocused Sparky on the laptop screen.

 _“He’s trying to bypass your bypass,”_ Riley told them, monitoring their frequency.

“Go get ‘em, Riles,” Mac said softly.

 _“Oh, I got this,”_ Riley replied, sounding almost amused.

Less than fifteen seconds later, the laptop screen went black. The man standing at the Aegis booth cursed, slamming the lid down, then slapped his hand on the edge of the counter making the two people on the other side of the booth jump in surprise before he turn to face Bozer and Mac.

“Do you have any idea what you just did?” he demanded.

Mac lifted a shoulder. “Stopped you from manufacturing a faulty biologic that would have injected poison into thousands of people?”

The man narrowed his eyes and stepped forward, temporarily restrained by the hand of one of the men at the Aegis booth.

“Wait, Dan,” the man called. “Think about this.”

“I’m done thinking,” Dan replied, jerking out of the weak grip, and stomping toward where Mac stood flanking Sparky.

 _“I called security,”_ Riley told them.

“Tell them to hurry,” Bozer muttered, bracing himself as the man grabbed Mac by his shirt and shook him.

“You just lost eighteen million dollars,” he shouted, oblivious to Mac’s slim fingers wrapping around his wrists. He shook him again. “Eighteen _million_ dollars. It was enough to fund my research for _years_.”

“Maybe you should have thought about the consequences—” Mac started, but then seemed to flinch, his eyes shooting to the space between the two booths, gaze suddenly unfocused.

“Mac?” Bozer called, but Dan wasn’t interested in whether his quarry was focused on him or not.

With fury born of a lost opportunity, he flung Mac to the side and reached for Sparky. Unsteady in the man’s grip, Mac stumbled, going down to his hands and knees, shaking his head as if to clear it. Bozer hurriedly stepped in front of Sparky.

“Can’t let you do that, man,” Bozer said, surprising himself. Whatever trepidation he felt initially disappeared the moment Mac went to his knees. “Step away from the A.I.”

“You used that goddamn _robot_ to steal my money,” Dan growled, his face red, spittle bubbling a bit at his lips.

“We…we didn’t steal anything,” Mac returned, gaining his feet once more.

Bozer tried to catch his eye, but Mac was looking toward the floor, almost as if he were trying _not_ to see Bozer…or something around Bozer. Sparky? Had the reprogramming triggered something for Mac?

“We just stopped you from hurting thousands of pe—”

His sentence abruptly cut off and his head jerked up. Bozer tensed, still standing guard in front of the seated A.I., one hand out warding off Dan’s enraged advance. Mac was looking at the space between the booths, eyes wide, throat working, hands visibly shaking.

“Stop it,” he growled.

“Mac?” Bozer called, worry modulating his voice.

“You don’t know what you’re _talking_ about,” Mac shouted, shaking his head again, one hand going up to his bruised temple, pressing his palm hard against the purpled mark.

 _“Bozer, security is three minutes out,”_ Riley said in his ear. _“Just keep him calm.”_

Bozer wasn’t sure if she was referring to Enraged Dan or Disconnected from Reality Mac, but he knew one thing was certain: there were too many people in too small a space for _anyone_ to remain calm. He looked over at the two other people at the Aegis booth.

“Get the hell out of here,” he ordered.

To his surprise, they obeyed immediately, scrambling over each other to get out from behind the booth and through the sliding glass doors that closed off their section. Dan, however, had apparently seen an opening with Mac’s distraction and lunged for the packet of tools unrolled next to their laptop. Before Bozer realized what he was doing, Dan had grabbed one of the larger screwdrivers and pivoted toward were Mac stood with his face fisted in pain, a hand at his temple.

“Oh, hell no,” Bozer muttered, moving without thinking directly into Dan’s path, blocking his arm as the other man reached for Mac.

Dan flipped the screwdriver around easily in his grip, holding it like a weapon. The suddenness of the move startled Bozer enough that he stumbled and was easily pushed to the ground with a sweep of Dan’s arm. Bozer opened his mouth to warn Mac, when his friend seemed to realize there was danger near.

Instincts born of training brought Mac’s arms up, across his body, to block the wild slice of the sharp screwdriver and Bozer winced as he saw a line of red open on Mac’s forearm. Mac shoved back viciously, sending Dan off balance, and stumbling back until his spine hit the edge of the Phoenix booth next to Sparky. Using that as his ground, Dan shoved back, fueled by his anger, and took Mac to the floor next to Bozer in a flying tackle.

“You’re wrong,” Mac gasped as Dan leveraged himself up, the arm holding the screwdriver still in Mac’s grip, the other wrestled free and raised to punch Mac. “It’s not the same!”

Bozer didn’t know who Mac was talking to—or what he was talking _about_ —but he damn sure wasn’t going to let his friend become a punching bag. He launched to his feet and grabbed Dan’s arm, pulling him back and away from Mac, the two of them landing in a tangled heap. Dan flipped around, apparently satisfied to hurt one of them, not caring which, and raised the screwdriver over his head.

“Mac!” Bozer called, terrified that he wasn’t going to be able to push the deranged man’s weight off him.

“ _MAC!”_ he heard Riley’s voice in his earpiece. _“Bozer needs help!”_

From the corner of his eye, Bozer saw Mac roll to his side, raising up on his elbow. Dan growled, pushing his weapon forward, having apparently lost all sense of reason, and Bozer cried out, pushing back.

“MAC!”

He could see Mac climbing to his knees, but then shouted something that sounded like _you’re not real_ and pressed his hands to the sides of his head.

“Riley!” Bozer shouted. “Where the hell is security!”

 _“They’re close, Boze,”_ Riley promised. _“They’re getting hung up in the crowds in the main convention center."_

Clearly realizing that the tables were about to be turned, Dan pulled back, stumbling to his feet, but kept a grip on Bozer’s jacket. At this angle, and with that screwdriver aimed for the underside of his jaw, Bozer was helpless to do anything but follow the man upright, realizing too late that he’d turned himself into a hostage.

“I _had to_ push that button—it’s not even close to the same thing!” Mac growled hands pressed to the sides of his head.

 _“Oh, Mac,”_ Riley breathed.

Bozer struggled against Dan’s hold, but when Mac stumbled to his feet, he was distracted long enough to get turned so that Dan’s arm was across his throat, the sharp point of the screwdriver against his carotid artery. Mac dragged his eyes up and looked over at them, but Bozer could tell he wasn’t really _seeing_ them.

“I _tried_ ,” Mac said then, his voice breaking.

“Mac,” Bozer rasped, the arm at his throat tight in its panicked hold. “Look at me, man.”

Mac pressed the heel of his hand against his head, swaying slightly on his feet. They were between the two booths, Sparky behind Mac, and Dan was pulling Bozer toward the sliding glass entrance. Bozer kept his eyes on his friend, dropping his weight into his heels, making it as difficult as possible for Dan to move him—while trying to avoid being turned into a human shish-kabob.

Mac dropped his hand, his blue eyes bright with emotion. “I tried,” he said again, this time with more force.

“I know,” Bozer told him, tugging hard on Dan’s arm, trying to get volume behind his words. “I know, man. You want to save the whole world.”

Mac flinched at that; a wordless reply swept his features, swift, violent, and painful to see.

“They’re going to kill…so many…so _many_ ,” Mac said, and Bozer thought for sure he was looking at them at this point—until he staggered back slightly, as if dodging someone.

Dan’s arm wielding his make-shift weapon started to lower, his attention on the blond man currently losing his mind right before their eyes, and three things suddenly happened very fast.

Bozer jerked his elbow back roughly, knocking the screwdriver from Dan’s grip.

The glass doors behind them opened and four security guards stormed in.

And Mac reached up to grip the sides of his head once more, crying out in a voice so strangled it didn’t even sound like him, “You can’t end the world to save it!”

As though _he_ was the one disconnected from reality, Bozer watched the events unfold around him in a slight daze. Clearly uncertain where the biggest threat was emanating from, three of the security guards turned toward Mac while one grabbed Dan. Bozer realized then the guards held weapons.

And they were trained on Mac.

“Wait, no!” Bozer shouted, but it was too late.

Mac’s body jerked back with the impact of a rubber bullet to his ribs while two tasers leads struck him, one in the shoulder, the other in the belly. He fell backwards, his body impacting the carpet-covered cement floor with a dull thud, muscles twitching and jerking spasmodically with the volts of electricity spiraling through him, a trapped-animal sound sliding up from his gut to tremble through his throat and into the open.

Bozer rushed to his side, grabbing the thin wires attached to the taser leads and yanking them out.

“ _He’s_ the bad guy!” he bellowed, flinging the loose wires toward where the fourth guard had Dan’s arms behind him, pulling a zip tie taut around his wrists.

Bozer pulled the taser leads off Mac’s body, wincing in tragic sympathy as Mac’s muscles continued to spasm and clench, a pained sort of gasping groan slipping through his clenched teeth. His eyes were open, blue visible through a mess of lashes, but he wasn’t coherent—not that he’d really been before, Bozer allowed.

“Hey, hey, man,” Bozer tried, leaning over Mac, his hands at his shoulders.

“S-still…h-here,” Mac choked out, his breath stuttering across his teeth, his back bowing.

Bozer nodded. “I’m still here.”

Mac’s eyes roamed restlessly, one hand reaching for Bozer’s arm, the other pressing against the floor next him, blood from the cut on his forearm smearing against the carpet.

“Get…’way. ‘s still h-here.”

Bozer frowned, the involuntary movement of Mac’s twitching hand catching his eye before he closed his fingers over Mac’s wrist, trying to hold him still. Mac flinched violently, looking as if he were trying to sit forward when all motion abruptly ceased, and a sound caught half-way between a groan and sob slipped loose and bounced in the space between them.

“Easy, man, hold still,” Bozer pleaded, trying to remember if rubber bullets could cause internal bleeding. “Just hold still.”

“Sir, let us help,” one of the guards said from above and behind where Bozer crouched over Mac.

Bozer didn’t even bother looking back at him. “Back off,” he growled. “You did enough.”

 _“Bozer, Russ is five minutes out,”_ Riley assured him.

“Sir, we should call an ambulance,” the guard pressed, one hand on Bozer’s shoulder.

Bozer jerked his arm out of the guard’s grasp and curled his back in protection of where Mac lay gasping and twitching.

Riley’s concern-laden voice echoed in his ear once more. _“We got him, Boze.”_

“They’re not taking him, Ri,” Bozer declared. “No way.”

 _“I know,”_ Riley reassured him. _“We got him.”_

“Sir—”

Bozer glared over his shoulder. “Just back the hell off, man,” he snapped. “Our people are coming.”

“Sir, we can’t let you leave without—”

“There are security cameras all over this place,” Bozer broke in. “Not going to take much for us to get you for shooting my friend.”

Bozer sensed the man step back as Mac groaned, body bucking forward in a muscle spasm so harsh, it curled his back. Bozer caught him awkwardly, pulling Mac toward him, his friend’s head tucked against his shoulder.

“We’re sorry,” the guard said, his voice sounding truly contrite. “We thought you were in danger.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not,” Bozer muttered as Mac grit his teeth, the sound of his rasping breaths almost too much for Bozer to bear. “It’s okay, Mac. I’m here, man.”

Mac seemed to be trying to reach past Bozer’s shoulder, looking as though he were pushing something—or some _one_ —away. Bozer caught his hand and tucked it up against his chest and holy _shit_ he was shaking so much. Did tasers really make the body shake this much? It was like trying to hold onto an earthquake.

“You’re safe,” Bozer said, his arms beginning to ache as he held Mac close. “You’re safe, I promise. You’re going to be okay.”

“B-boze….” Mac managed, his teeth—or maybe his jaw, it was hard to tell—grinding as he forced the word out between harsh puffs of breath.

“Trust me, Mac,” Bozer pleaded. “I got you, man. Just trust me.”

Mac shivered against him, gasping as though the pain surged through him in flashes and waves, his skin shuddering as if he were still feeling the currents of electricity. The hand Bozer held twitched and flinched while the one cast to the side of his body seemed to flex and curl at odd intervals.

He was concentrating so hard on keeping Mac calm he missed the hiss of the glass doors as another person entered the room. When a hand rested on his shoulder once more, Bozer jerked away.

“Easy, Bozer, it’s me.” Russ’ voice washed over him. “I’ve got our medics with me.”

“They shot him,” Bozer choked out, slightly surprised to feel tears so close to the surface. He thought he’d been doing a pretty good job keeping himself in check.

“We know,” Russ said, his hand getting heavier as he crouched next to where Bozer sat clutching Mac against him. “We’re going to help him.”

Bozer registered the movement of a man with dark hair and a strangely familiar face as he positioned himself on Mac’s other side. Bozer took in his dark blue jacket with the Phoenix logo and universal red cross sign of a medic as he reached out for Mac’s twitching hand, checking his pulse before readying a narrow syringe.

“What’s that?” Bozer demanded.

“It’s okay, it’s going to calm him down,” the medic replied. “It’s just a mild sedative.”

Bozer watched as the medic injected the slim needle into Mac’s arm, dispensing the clear liquid, and within seconds the tension in Mac’s body began to evaporate. His hand twitched again, but then his fingers uncurled, his shoulders dropped, his head sliding back from Bozer’s chest to the crook of his arm.

His breathing started to even out from the harsh gasps of moments before and his blue eyes rolled drowsily around him, as if he had no idea where he was, but really couldn’t be bothered to care.

“It didn’t knock him out?” Bozer asked, allowing the medic to help him easy Mac to the ground.

“Not yet,” the medic replied. “Give it a few, though. He’s…kind of a mess.”

Bozer frowned, watching the medic watch Mac. “I know you?”

The medic nodded, not glancing up. “Name’s Wade. I…uh. Helped. Earlier.”

Bozer frowned, following his eyeline back to Mac, watching as his friend lost focus and his blinks slowed until he was completely lax, his body no longer shaking, twitching, spasming.

“Earlier,” Bozer pressed as Wade lifted the hem of Mac’s shirt, grimacing at what he saw before dropping it back down. “Like…back in the lab, you mean,” finally placing him as the medic who’d helped them wake Mac up before DARPA came on scene.

“Never should have walked away,” Wade muttered to himself, motioning to someone over Bozer’s shoulder.

Russ tightened his grip, encouraging Bozer to stand and move to the side so that Wade and his team could load Mac up on a backboard.

“Let’s head through the side door, shall we?” Russ stepped forward, leading the small entourage past the guards, past Dan—who looked down when Bozer glared at him—and through the glass doors.

They headed out of the building through an emergency exit—Riley’s voice in Bozer’s ear as she instructed Russ on how to get out of the building quickly while encountering as few people as possible. A truck sat waiting for them—it looked a bit like an armored security vehicle, but when Bozer climbed in the back, he realized it was set up to be an ambulance. He glanced at Russ, sitting next to him, across from where the medics secured the backboard carrying Mac.

Russ lifted a shoulder. “I’ve found in my line of work it’s often a best practice to draw as little attention to yourself as possible,” he offered by way of explanation.

Bozer sat forward, elbows on knees, and rubbed his face. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so tired. He hadn’t slept well since Desi called to let him know Mac had disappeared. And he didn’t think he was going to be sleeping well again until he knew Mac was going to be okay.

“How is he?” Russ asked the medics as they moved in choreographed precision around Mac.

Wade shook his head. “His BP’s all over the fucking place,” he snapped. “He’s dehydrated, probable broken ribs, possible internal bleeding. Not to mention the concussion from two days ago—” he shot a harsh glance at Russ. “Did you bother to even see if he was sleeping? People with concussions need to sleep.”

Russ didn’t reply and Bozer followed his lead. He didn’t know what to say; the anger in the medic’s tone wasn’t just pointed at them. He knew the man was blaming himself as well. They were all culpable in this, even Mac. They all had to stop barreling through life like they were living on borrowed time if they wanted to see the other side of all this.

Bozer hung back when they reached the Phoenix, watching as Wade and the team of medics took Mac to the medical wing. Movement to his right caught his eye and he glanced over to see three of the lab techs climb out of a black SUV carting Sparky and their equipment between them.

“Oh, shit,” Bozer dragged a hand down his face. “I totally forgot, man.” He looked over at Russ. “Some bad-ass spy I am. Forgot all about the million-dollar tech we brought with us.”

Russ offered him a half grin and dropped a comforting hand on his shoulder. “You’re plenty bad-ass, Bozer,” he reassured him. “You helped stop Aegis from marketing a drug that could potentially kill thousands of people.”

Bozer sighed, nodded, and looked down at the blacktop-covered parking lot. “I think we broke him,” he said softly.

“Sparky?” Russ asked, turning toward the entrance. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

Bozer internally rolled his eyes at the man’s intentional misunderstanding. “No, Mac.”

“He just needs some rest—”

“No, man,” Bozer shook his head as he stepped from the heat of the California afternoon into the air-conditioned hallway of the Phoenix. “You didn’t hear him. He was…he thought there was someone there. Someone… _not us_. He was arguing with them.”

Russ didn’t reply, just rested his hand on Bozer’s shoulder and quietly guided him back through the halls to where Riley waited in the War Room. When he saw her, Bozer felt the tears build once more, burning the backs of his eyes. Riley stood, setting her laptop aside, and crossed over to him, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him flush against her body.

“You did good, Boze,” she said, her mouth pressed against his shoulder.

“What did we do to him, Ri?” Bozer asked, his voice breaking as the tears pressed their advantage. “How did we let it get this bad?”

“He’s going to be okay,” Riley stepped back. “He is, you’ll see.” She rested her palm against the side of his neck, the cool touch of her skin easing the slam of his frantic heart. “You know better than any of us how strong he is,” she reminded him. “He’s going to be okay.”

“They’re checking him out in medical now,” Matty’s voice came toward him from the doorway. Bozer turned to look at her, noting for the first time the lines of worry that bisected her brows and pulled her mouth down into a frown. “If you want to go down and wait.”

“I do,” Bozer replied. “You give them everything they need to figure out how to help him?”

Matty narrowed her eyes, head tilted in puzzlement or challenge, he could never really be sure with her.

“You tell them what all was in that cocktail we gave him?” Bozer clarified.

Matty pressed her lips closed. “I did,” she nodded, her voice soft. “And I’ve been working on a few other things I think might help, too.”

“You know,” Russ sighed, dropping heavily onto the couch, one arm up across the back. “This isn’t just about the DARPA drug,” he offered. “There’s more going on here.”

Bozer lifted an eyebrow. “You mean, like…having to leave his dad behind to die?”

“Or having to choose to kill one man to save the rest of us?” Riley interjected.

Bozer crossed his arms over his chest, squaring off even though no one was challenging him. He felt defensive and protective and he wasn’t sure what to do with the surge of emotions churning inside of him in that moment.

“Or getting body-slammed against the floor and cracking his head open?” he added.

“He didn’t crack his head _open_ ,” Russ muttered, examining his fingers as if they held the keys to the universe.

“Really? That’s your take-away?” Riley scoffed.

“The point is,” Russ said, bringing his head up to look at them all in that way he had that always made Bozer feel as though he was being tested, “we’re all in agreement that Mac isn’t…stable.”

“Stability has nothing to do with it,” Matty scoffed. “This is on us. You and me.”

Russ blinked at her, surprised. “How do you—”

“ _We_ put him in each situation where he was hurt—mentally, physically, and emotionally—and we didn’t give him time to heal, Russ.”

“The world didn’t give us time,” Russ countered quietly.

“Oh, gimme a break,” Bozer scoffed without thinking. Three pairs of eyes turned to him, registering different levels of surprise. “There are about a hundred other ways you could have handled this Aegis thing and you know it. He shoulda been resting until all that…that DMT shit was out of his system and he wasn’t dealing with a constant migraine.”

“He had a migraine?” Riley asked, frowning.

“The hell should I know,” Bozer raised his hands in frustration, letting them smack against his thighs to emphasize his point. “He never got a chance to tell us—but you all damn sure saw him holding his head back at that convention center. He was hurting and we just used him.” He let his eyes skim over each of them. “Like we always do.”

With those words, he turned and stormed out of the War Room, noting that not one voice called him back. He took the elevator to medical and made his way back to the exam area. He saw Wade the medic sitting in one of the chairs outside of a closed exam room and he paused.

“Doc’s still with him,” Wade reported.

“I should call Desi,” Bozer sighed, sitting down next to Wade.

Wade looked over at him. “She’s the one with the tats? Pretty Asian lady?”

Bozer nodded. “That’s her.”

“She was here already,” Wade told him. “Said she was going up to find Ms. Webber.”

Bozer nodded, then glanced over with a frown. “Why are _you_ still here?”

Wade shrugged. “Tell you the truth, I don’t know,” he replied, slumping back into the curve of the plastic chair, his dark head _thunking_ gently against the wall behind him. “I just haven’t been able to stop thinking about what he’s had to do since they brought him into the lab and not medical.”

“I hear you,” Bozer sighed.

They sat side by side in silence for another hour. Matty came down, followed soon thereafter by Desi and Riley. They all sat waiting until a door opened and a doctor Bozer recognized but couldn’t name stepped out. His eyes landed on Matty.

“We need to talk,” he said, his tone giving Bozer a sinking feeling in his gut.

“Is Mac okay?” Bozer asked, standing up. He shoved hands in his pockets, then clasped them in front of him, then behind at parade rest. What the hell did he do with his hands?

“He will be,” the doctor replied, still not looking away from Matty, who started back, impassive. “With a lot of rest. I’m grounding him.”

“You can’t do that,” Matty stated flatly.

“Director—”

“But _I_ can,” she completed. “Tell me.”

Slightly mollified by Matty’s agreement, the doctor sighed. “He has a grade 2 concussion, three cracked ribs, and some severe bruising—but thankfully, no internal bleeding from the impact.” He consulted the folder in his hand, eyes skimming a readout. “His electrolytes are dangerously low—he’s clearly been dehydrated for some time. The taser burns will be plenty painful but are ultimately superficial. However, it’s going to take his heartrate a while to regulate, especially with,” he paused, looking up at Matty, “the results of his tox screen.”

Bozer watched as Matty brought her chin up, as though bracing herself.

“We found significant amounts of benzodiazepines—such as midazolam, which directly impacts memory—and dimethyltryptamine in his system,” he reported, closing the folder and crossing his hands over his chest, the chart gripped in one hand hard enough the crisp manilla puckered. “Ms. Webber, I’ve been here since Thornton. Since we were DXS. I’ve basically watched that kid go from a battle-shocked vet to a skilled operative. Now, granted, up until a couple of years ago, he had Dalton watching his back, but despite that, I have never seen this kind of drug cocktail in his blood without his having been captured or tortured.”

Bozer felt the blood drain from his face and looked over at Riley, seeing her go pale as well. Desi stood next to them, her body visibly tense, her hands locked behind her, eyes on the doctor.

“We’ve given him fluids to help flush his system, but—and I _cannot_ stress this enough,” the doctor leaned forward, eyes intense on Matty, “he needs _rest_. You use him for his brain,” he continued, and Bozer flinched slightly at the phrasing. “If you want to keep that intact, you won’t keep pushing him until he’s had a chance to…rebalance.”

Matty nodded, whatever she felt about the bullets of words striking her carefully shielded behind a mask of professional disconnect.

“Thank you, Doctor,” she replied. “Can we go see him?”

The doctor straightened up, sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. “He’s most likely going to want to go home the minute he wakes up. He’ll need to stay until his electrolytes are leveled out and we can at least partially regulate his heartrate. And he’ll need someone to stay with him,” his eyes hit each of them in turn. “I would imagine his memory hasn’t been stellar the last few days.”

At their nods, he continued, “It’s likely to not get better until the drugs have fully flushed from his system.”

“Don’t worry, Doc,” Bozer spoke up. “We got him.”

The doctor nodded. “You can go in,” he said. “He should still be sleeping—I’d let him sleep as long as he can.”

Wade the medic stood up at that. “I’m heading out,” he said, reaching out to shake Bozer’s hand.

“Wait, don’t you want to see him?” Bozer asked, holding the man fast by his hand.

Wade shook his head, offering no further explanation. “You did really well back there,” he said. “You’re a good friend.”

Bozer released him and watched him head out of medical, following the doctor. Sighing, he headed for the door, realizing belatedly that only Riley was behind him. He paused with his hand on the door, looking over at Desi.

“You coming?”

She had a strange look on her face—an expression caught midway between regret and relief.

“I’m going to wait,” she said. “Give him some time.”

“He’s gonna want to see you,” Riley argued.

Desi smiled, but it didn’t hit her eyes. Instead, they looked inexplicably sad. “It’s okay,” she replied. “I’ll catch him back at the house. Promise.”

Matty nodded. “You two go,” she instructed. “Desi and I need to take care of a few things.”

Bozer exchanged a glance with Riley, then shrugged and pushed the door open. The lights were dimmed, most likely in anticipation of Mac waking with a headache. Bozer stopped at the foot of Mac’s bed, literally incapable of moving further into the room. He looked at this friend with a confused tangle of sympathy, horror, and guilt, still able to feel the way Mac’s body trembled against him.

They’d removed his shirt, but hadn’t put a gown on him, leaving the bandaged taser burns and sunburst shades of the deep bruise visible. A bandage was wrapped around his forearm where the screwdriver had cut him, that hand draped across his midsection. Mac had always been a slim guy, the kind of lean muscle that spoke of restlessness and constant motion. Now, though, the sinewy muscle stretched across bones, beneath skin, seemed to scream of fragility rather than strength, the more Bozer stared.

Several leads were attached to his chest, leading to a heart monitor, and an IV catheter was inserted into the back of one hand. He wasn’t on oxygen, and somehow that made Bozer feel both reassured and panicky at once.

Riley stepped past him, walking quietly up to the side of Mac’s bed. She reached out and gently brushed Mac’s hair from his face.

Bozer wrapped his hands around the bottom of the Hilltop hospital bed, the handholds placed there for medical personnel to be able to easily maneuver the bed around, and gripped until the hard-plastic seams pressed painfully into his palms.

“Who do you think he was seeing?” Bozer asked softly, knowing Riley had heard and seen the entire event thanks to her monitoring system.

Riley exhaled slowly, her eyes on Mac’s profile. “Maybe the same person he was talking to when he got to the lab yesterday?”

“Think it’s his dad?”

Riley frowned, looking over her shoulder at him. “What, like…haunting him?”

Bozer folded his lips down in a shrug. “Not just houses are haunted, y’know.”

They stood quietly for several minutes, watching Mac sleep.

“Desi’s scared,” Riley said finally.

“Of him?”

Riley shook her head. “I think of…not being enough for him. Or right for him.”

“She tell you that?”

Riley turned and sank into one of the chairs against the wall, well away from the bed. “She didn’t have to.” She rubbed her bottom lip with the flat of her index finger. “Sometimes…his nightmares are….” She stopped, looking uncertain.

“I’ve heard them,” Bozer reminded her. “Used to worry about what he’d be like the next morning when his shouts woke me up, on the other side of the house.”

Riley nodded, listening.

“But then,” Bozer lifted a shoulder, letting his eyes rest on his friend’s face as Mac’s brows folded in his sleep. “Next morning he’d be up and smiling. Ready for…whatever happened next. And I’d be left feeling like an idiot for worrying. ‘Cause…he’s got this, y’know? He’s just…always solid.”

“Except, he’s not,” Riley sighed. “And…he shouldn’t have to be.”

“We really dropped the ball, huh?”

Riley didn’t reply and Bozer forced himself to unclench his hands, moving around to the other side of the bed, sitting down to wait. After about an hour, one of the medical staff came in to change out Mac’s IV bag and check his stats, then left again. Riley stood and stretched, offering to get them some food. Bozer nodded in grateful agreement but didn’t move.

Watching Mac sleep, he was caught in his own loop of memories.

When Mac’s father had left, Bozer had been confused about how a parent could do that to their kid, but his parents explained that people react to pain in all manner of behavior. He saw how Mac dealt with pain when Harry died, when he came back from Afghanistan, when he lost people he couldn’t save…when Jack left.

But he hadn’t seen him deal with people he’d had to _let_ die. People he’d had to _kill_.

And Bozer didn’t want _this_ —the dissociative, broken man he’d seen in that convention center—to be the way Mac dealt with this new pain. He couldn’t handle losing Mac like that.

Mac shifted in the bed, the sheet that had been pulled up to his waist shifting, his hand flexing against the flat of the bed.

“Mac?” Bozer called carefully, leaning forward.

He wasn’t expecting the rushed gasp, nor the panicked surge of motion as Mac lurched forward, blue eyes open wide, arm up and bent as if warding off a blow. Bozer reflexively caught his shoulders, balancing him, eyes darting in worry as Mac blinked hard, clearly fighting to focus on Bozer’s face. After a heartbeat, he exhaled on a rush, one hand pressing to his bruised side.

“Hey, easy, take it easy,” Bozer encouraged, holding Mac upright.

“S’okay. I’m okay,” Mac rasped. It wasn’t entirely clear which of them he was trying to reassure. “Dizzy,” he forced out through a clenched jaw.

“Yeah, okay,” Bozer nodded. “How ‘bout you lay back for a sec.”

Mac allowed himself to be eased back against the bed, and Bozer tilted the head of the bed up slightly so he wasn’t lying quite as flat.

“Want some water?” Bozer asked, as Mac looked around the room.

Mac blinked—nodding seemed to be a little beyond him at that point—and Bozer got him a plastic cup with a straw. Once he drained the water, he sank back against the pillows, dropping one forearm across his eyes, the other hand still pressing lightly against his side.

“Medical?” he asked, his voice like crushed gravel.

“Yeah, you, uh…,” Bozer stopped trying to figure out the best course of action at this point. “You remember the convention center?”

“Some of it,” Mac confessed, not removing his arm. “I hurt anyone?”

“What? No!” Bozer replied, surprised by the question. “That Aegis guy got arrested, and we stopped them from getting that formula out, but, uh….”

“Why do I feel like a punching bag?” Mac muttered.

Bozer’s eyebrows bounced up. “’Cause you kinda got…shot and tased.”

Mac lifted his forearm off one eye, squinting at Bozer. “I got…shot?”

“Rubber bullet,” Bozer quickly amended. “Cracked some ribs.”

“Feels like it,” Mac groaned, dropping his arm back down across his eyes. “’m sorry, Boze.”

“Why are you sorry?”

Mac was silent for several heartbeats, but Bozer watched his throat working.

“Hey, it’s just you and me here,” Bozer reassured him. “I know I’m not like Desi or, well…Jack,” he acknowledged, “but I used to be a pretty good listener.”

Mac’s lips folded down in a frown. “Still are,” he reassured.

Bozer hitched a hip on the edge of Mac’s bed, avoided where his friend’s free hand slid from pressing against his cracked ribs to flatten against the sheets as though seeking balance. They sat quietly for several minutes and Bozer didn’t take his eyes from what he could see of Mac’s face.

Thinking.

About the kid who’d come into his room after his brother died and just climbed up on the bed to sit next to him, not saying a word, just letting him feel another person nearby, living, breathing, _there_.

About the kid he’d found curled in a ball in the corner of their treehouse trying so hard not to cry he was hyperventilating, because his dad left and he was lost, untethered, uncertain about everything in his life.

About the kid who walked away from MIT to disarm bombs in a foreign country because it wasn’t enough that he knew more than anyone, he had to do something about what he knew.

About the kid who woke up sweating and shouting, fighting terrors only he’d seen and only he knew.

About the kid who saved them all, over and over, with just his mind and the elements at his disposal.

About the kid who shook the hand of the only person who’d constantly kept him safe, saying goodbye because he didn’t have a choice.

About the kid who walked away from his father, knowing he was leaving him to die.

“You okay, Mac?” Bozer asked quietly.

Mac’s lips folded further, and his chin trembled. “No.”

Bozer dropped his hand on Mac’s leg, waiting. He could feel slight tremors in his friend’s muscles—nothing like before, more like he was holding himself back, keeping his emotions under tight lock and key. It tore something loose inside of Bozer, sending feelings adrift in his chest so that he couldn’t figure out which were his and which were empathy for Mac.

“It’s okay not to be okay,” Bozer told him. “You know that, right? I know you know that…’cause you told me that once, you remember? When we were kids? And I went through one of the darkest times in my whole life. You sat next to me, and you put your arm around my shoulder, and you told me that it was okay that I wasn’t okay. And you weren’t going anywhere.”

Bozer saw a tear slip from beneath Mac’s protective arm, tucking into the corner of his trembling lips.

“So, I’m just sending that back to you right now, man,” Bozer said. “I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere. I promise you.”

“You can’t make that promise,” Mac said, as if anything louder than a whisper was beyond him.

Bozer drew his head back. “Why not?”

Mac dropped his arm, curling it across his side so that his long fingers pressed gently against the bruise left behind by the rubber bullet, his other hand flat against the mattress. His eyes were closed, but the delicate skin that surrounded them was pink, his lashes wet against his cheeks.

“Because everyone who has ever said that to me has died or left,” he said brokenly, “and I can’t handle losing you, Boze.” He blinked his eyes open, lashes tented by tears. “Not you.”

Bozer swallowed hard, nodding. “Okay, so…how ‘bout I promise just for now. For the next…,” he glanced at his watch, “thirty minutes, I’m not going anywhere. I can make that promise, right?”

Mac blinked at him, and then the corner of his mouth tipped up in a sad little smile. “Yeah, okay.”

Bozer sat quietly, trying to figure out what Desi or Jack or Riley, or, hell, even Matty would do in this situation. How they’d get Mac to talk to them.

As it turned out, he didn’t need to do things like any of them. He just had to sit with him, quietly, and wait.

“I’m not doing too well,” Mac confessed finally, his gaze directed downward, his fingers creasing the sheets over and over. “I…uh…,” he swallowed. “I kinda feel like I’m losing my mind.”

It was on the tip of Bozer’s tongue to immediately deny that, but something held him back. When Mac continued to talk, he was glad he hadn’t said anything.

“I don’t know what…what I’m seeing…or why I’m seeing it, but…,” his breath hitched and Bozer watched as he fought to get a grip on his emotions, wrestling them into submission so that he could continue to talk, “it scares me.”

Bozer watched another tear follow the path of the first down Mac’s face, the salty liquid finding a home at the corner of Mac’s mouth, then disappearing. He felt his own eyes burn in reaction.

“I d-don’t know what to do,” Mac continued, his voice cracking as emotion tightened its grip on him. “Everything… _everything_ hurts. Like…from the inside out. And I just…I just wanna disappear.”

Bozer felt his eyes well, then spill as Mac’s breath bounced through his parted lips. They had all let him down so bad. The doctor had been right—they used Mac for his mind, to save the greater good. But they didn’t protect him. They didn’t watch out for him, knowing he wouldn’t watch out for himself.

“I’m so sorry, Mac,” Bozer whispered. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, man.”

Mac didn’t reply, didn’t look at him. He seemed to be holding himself very still.

“I knew you weren’t…right,” Bozer confessed, thinking about Mac walking into the lab alone the day before clearly arguing with someone who wasn’t there, and then at the convention hall, he’d been… _afraid_. Whoever he was seeing, scared him.

Cheryl Warner from DARPA had warned the all that the drug had been known to cause mental breakdowns and they all stood there and nodded, waving her forward and watching Mac fall down the rabbit hole inside his own mind.

“I knew you were struggling, and I didn’t…I didn’t say anything. I didn’t stop you—stop anyone—from letting you take that drug and then letting you go on this mission.”

Mac frowned, his fingers spreading over the bruise on his side. “How did…?”

“I think…,” Bozer cleared his throat. “It was like you were seeing someone who wasn’t there, man. And when the guards broke in to get the dude who was stealing the bad formula…they got, uh…confused.”

Mac blinked, looking at Bozer for the first time since he’d woken up. His eyes were red-rimmed and wet, but clear.

“What was I saying?”

Bozer pulled his lower lip against his teeth and lifted a shoulder. “It’s like…like you were fighting with someone. About…about you not having a choice with Lasky. And about…killing the world to save it.” As he spoke a thought occurred to him. “It’s like you were fighting with someone about File 47, man.”

Mac closed his eyes, dropping his head back to tent his fingers over his temples.

“I was,” he confessed. “I…uh…,” he sighed, dropping his hand. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

“You don’t have to,” Bozer reassured him.

Mac took a slow breath, blinking his eyes open, but staring at the ceiling, his head still back against the pillows. “I think I do,” he said softly.

Bozer waited, dragging a hand down his face to clear away the drying tears.

“When I was…y’know…,” Mac licked his lips, searching for the words, “in my head…. I saw my mom.”

Bozer drew his head back in surprise. He hadn’t been expecting that. “You remember her?”

“A version of her, yeah,” Mac said. “She was just a little older than I am now. She…helped me. Figure out what I needed to do. But.”

His words were stilted, the rhythm of his sentences punctuated by small shivers and quick gasps for air—as if there wasn’t enough or he was afraid of running out.

“She was afraid of someone. And warned me that he was looking for me. And when he found me. It would be over.”

“Who was she afraid of?” Bozer asked, almost dreading the answer.

Mac swallowed convulsively. “Me.”

Bozer tilted his head. “You?”

“This… _other_ me. This not…me.”

Bozer frowned, trying to follow him, knowing instinctively that doubt and confusion in this moment was only going to frustrate Mac and shut him down.

“And he…followed me. Like, out of my head. Out into the…the _now_ ,” Mac said, huffing out a burst of pain-filled air. “And wouldn’t… _stop_. He just wouldn’t stop.”

“That’s who you saw? This…other you?” Bozer asked.

Mac nodded. “Kept talking with me about…Codex. About the plan. About my father choosing to die. To save me. About…Lasky.”

Bozer felt his heart climb to the base of his throat, threatening to choke him. He didn’t have to be a genius to realize this other version of Mac was still _Mac_. A part of his mind trying to work through the trauma of what he’d learned about his mother, about what had happened to his father. About what he’d had to do to Lasky.

“I tried, Boze,” Mac choked out. “I tried to save him.”

Bozer wasn’t sure if Mac was talking about his father or Lasky, but at this point…it didn’t really matter.

“I know you did, man,” Bozer said, reaching for Mac’s hand and stilling the fingers determined to wear a crease into the crisp sheets. “You did everything you could.”

Mac closed his eyes, dropping his arm across them once more. “I want to go home.”

Bozer sighed. His friend was basically one big bruise, but the doctor had said he could go, as long as someone stayed with him. Bozer told him as much.

“Desi’ll want to be there,” Bozer guessed.

Mac shook his head. “It’s…too much,” he whispered.

“Yeah, well,” Bozer slid from the bed, standing up and stretching his back. “I’m not leaving you alone.”

“I just want to sleep.”

“I bet you do, but…,” Bozer shrugged even though he knew Mac couldn’t see him with his arm blocking his eyes. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Half hour’s up,” Mac pointed out.

Bozer smiled. “Next one started. One half hour at a time, man.”

Mac dozed after that; Riley returned with food, and they waited together. Not talking about what Mac had said. Not really talking about much of anything.

Just staying close.

It took a little over an hour to get Mac disconnected from the medical apparatus, dressed, and gather the meds the doctors felt he’d need to combat the pain of the wounds and concussion. Another hour later, they were finally back to his house. Mac didn’t say a word on the drive and as soon as they reached his house, he pushed himself painfully to his feet out of the car, dragged his body to his room, and collapsed on his bed, wrapping his arms around his pillow and didn’t move again.

Bozer stood next to his bed for almost a full minute staring at him, trying to find a place inside of him for the noise of _feelings_ crashing against each other. He took a breath, then pulled Mac’s boots off him, tugging the sheets and blankets free from beneath the prison of his friend’s body and draped them over Mac’s back and shoulders.

“Get some rest,” Bozer said softly. “Next half hour starts when you wake up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N:** Thanks to **IceQueen1** (aka disappearinginq) for the Dalton’s Atomic Theory inspiration. *virtual fist bump*


	4. Chapter 4

**_Mac_ **

**_**_ **

He was dreaming.

It was like being inside himself and outside at the same time—he missed the moment when consciousness surrendered but recognized the instant the dream began to parallel memory. He felt lost—not like before. Not in need of a compass, but in need of a guide.

A hand to hold him. The security of another person near. Like his father.

He wondered confusedly where his dad went and then a little boy’s whisper reminded him that he was gone. Dead.

And then the world splintered as his insides twisted and the urge to scream crashed over him like a wave. It was blinding, burning, tearing through him, like a beast had its claws in his heart and was trying to rip it out. The silent _need_ for audible anguish strained impotent and mute against his throat, a nightmare silence that beat him back to awareness.

Lucidity hit him solidly in the center of his chest, almost knocking him back—though he was pretty sure he was lying down. He breathed carefully, feeling the fractures in his chest, in his lungs, in his heart, in his mind.

_Lost_.

Mac lay in the dark, his body frozen and sweat-soaked, trying to catch his breath. His heart was still punching him from the inside and the beat felt wrong—too fast and yet…not fast enough. A skipping rhythm staggering against his hollow rib cage as if _it_ was…lost.

Moving stiffly, he traced careful, trembling fingers along his skin, the tape over a gauze patch at his shoulder, then then lower near his waist, itching, the sensitive skin over his rib cage shivering and rippling from the pressure of his touch.

He couldn’t remember what day it was. He couldn’t see a clock to tell what time it was. And for a moment, he felt a terrifying weightlessness, the vertigo that always hit him when he stood on a high-edged precipice surging over him and pulling his eyes closed, even against the darkness around him.

_I’ve never felt so lost, ever. It’s like the string that was holding me to the ground snapped…and now I’m just floating away._

He dragged in a rough breath, grimacing as a white-hot pain surged through his side, fighting to steady his racing heart. Breathe in for four, hold for four, exhale for four. Again. And then one more time.

The dizziness abated as his breathing steadied and suddenly, he remembered Bozer sitting next to him in Medical, telling him about the guards taking him out in the convention center. Taking _him_ out because he was acting crazy. And who knows…maybe he was.

He rolled gingerly to his side, dragging his legs to the edge, and pushed himself upright. His eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness that he recognized the surroundings of his own room. He looked instinctively to where he kept a digital clock and saw that the pillow had been pushed over to cover the readout. Tugging the pillow back, he saw that it was just after nine in the evening.

What day…he had no idea.

But the pervasive ache told him that it hadn’t been that long, and it was time for more pain meds. Pushing carefully to his feet, he stuck out his hands as he wavered slightly, his head adjusting to the change in elevation. Shuffling stock-covered feet across his floor, wary of crashing his toes into something in the dark, he made his way to the bathroom.

The overhead light had him flinching back and wincing in pain, and he caught sight of himself in the mirror. He was shirtless. He didn’t remember taking off his shirt, but lately that was not a big surprise. A bandaged was wrapped around his forearm—he unwound it to see a long, thin cut, butterfly bandages keeping it closed. He had no idea how that occurred.

His eyes skipped to a large, dark bruise spreading upwards from the base of his rib cage, the center a collection of burst blood vessels. He could feel the sharp creak and groan of the cracked ribs beneath that bruise, knew from experience it would take a few weeks before he’d be able to take a deep breath without feeling like a knife was being driven between his bones.

He peeled off the gauze and tape on his shoulder and belly, grimacing at the burn marks. It looked like someone had extinguished four cigarettes on his skin. He skimmed his fingers over the burns, shivering as he remembered a flash of the moment when they hit—50,000 volts of electricity slicing through him in an instant.

Logically, he knew humans can’t _remember_ physical pain. It was ephemeral, fleeting. A measure built into the amygdala to protect the whole of the brain.

But he could _imagine_ how it felt. He could imagine it rather well, in fact.

Shrugging out of his sweatpants—which he also didn’t remember putting on—he climbed into the shower and turned the water on, gasping and flinching back as it started ice cold, then letting his body fold forward, melting against the tile wall as it heated up. The water sluiced down the back of his aching head, along the valley of his spine, and he pictured it carrying with it the images he couldn’t seem to shake.

Like the sight of his father—pale, bleeding, hands trembling—just before Mac stepped away. Left him there. To blow up.

Pretty pink mist.

_You go kaboom, I go kaboom._

Cut the right wire.

He pushed back from the tile wall and lifted his face to the heated spray of the water, trying to chase away the memories of choices.

Choices he made, and choices others made for him—others like his parents. Rubbing his hands roughly over his wet face he growled low in his throat, thinking about the goddamned _paradox_ of his father walking away from him as a child because he hadn’t been able to cope with the loss of his mom…who was mostly likely killed by the clandestine organization they _both_ worked for. With. Against?

What the hell, it was all so _fucked_ up.

The growl grew in volume and Mac reared his arm back, slamming the flat of his hand against the tile wall. When that didn’t feel like enough, he closed his fist, crashing his knuckles against the slick tile. Again, and again, the cut on his forearm stinging with the water and the motion and suddenly there was blood on the tile.

Mac paused, gasping, eyes on the blood. It thinned and dissipated as the water washed it down to the floor and the drain. He watched as it disappeared, watched as more dripped from his stinging knuckles, felt it slip down his face, from his eyes, to his mouth…except, _no_.

That wasn’t blood. Those were tears.

He slid to his knees in the shower, slumped to the side against the tile wall as his ribs screamed at him in protest, letting the spray of water hide the hot, angry tears shed in retaliation for the years of loneliness and the feeling of abandonment and the fact that _he_ was the reason his father left him.

Except…he hadn’t left. Not really. He’d been there the whole time.

He’d watched as Mac lost Pena and Harry and Nikki and Zoe and Nasha and Jack. He’d watched Murdoc torture Mac and the Ghost try to kill him. He’d watched Charlie save him and then let Charlie die.

And then he sacrificed his damn self to save Mac because Mac was more important and fuck him anyway—who gets to decide that? How was it right to leave him carrying that kind of burden?

The water was running cold. He was starting to shake; the motion pulling at his bruises and burns. He reached up with a clumsy hand and turned off the shower, sitting for a moment on the floor of his shower, naked and shivering and trying to remember why he should make himself stand up.

But then he did. For no reason other than…it was what he’s supposed to do. Move forward.

He wrapped the towel around his waist, avoiding his reflection because now he could see the red eyes and the pinched pain between his brows, and he didn’t want to see that very human part of him. He didn’t want to know that he got his aversion to onions and fear of heights from the woman who may have been part of a plot to destroy half the world’s population like the villain from a Marvel movie. He didn’t want to accept that his father knew she’d most likely been killed by her own government.

He didn’t want to think about how he could see the logic in her plan. How it made a sick sort of sense, when the emotion and morality was stripped away and all that was left behind was reason.

He grabbed a pair of cargo pants and a Henley, sliding them on clumsily without moving one arm too far from his fractured ribs, carefully easing the soft cotton blend over his cuts, bruises, and burns. He cleaned the blood still oozing on his knuckles, then wrapped the split skin in a bandage.

It was a strange pain, this sting. This ache.

It reminded him that he was real. That the logic the _Other_ him had spouted until he wanted to collapse inside himself was only part of the story.

Mac started to head out into the main part of the house, but heard the sound of dishes clinking in the kitchen and realized that one of his friends was there—most likely making sure he didn’t _actually_ float away and disappear on them. He pivoted and headed out the back way to the deck, not glancing toward the living room or kitchen, just needing to be outside. Just needing air.

Just needing to see the sky. Something that didn’t feel the lid of a box was closing on him. 

He couldn’t seem to stop rubbing his sore ribs and breathing was a sharp stitch, and he knew he should take the pain meds the doctor had prescribed earlier that day—or was it yesterday?

It didn’t matter.

He stumbled to the edge of the deck, his bare feet padding softly on the wooden slats. It was night and the city spread out before him lit up with secrets. He could feel his breath catching, but this time it was on emotion, not broken bones. A pain that was a whole different kind of reminder.

“Hey, Hoss.”

Mac chuckled humorlessly, reaching up to rub the back of his neck, eyes still on the lights of the city. Of course, he’d hear Jack’s voice. Because why the hell not? He couldn’t stop seeing his father’s pale visage just before he said goodbye, and he’s apparently being haunted by a twisted version of himself, and his mom was wandering through his mind dressed like a flapper, so why not Jack?

He did get shot and tased trying to catch a lunatic using the Dalton Atomic Theory not too long ago, so it all made sense, on some level.

“Been a long time.”

_Jesus_ , even inside Mac’s broken mind Jack had an uncanny ability to state the obvious.

He didn’t look to where Jack’s voice is coming from; he didn’t want to see that damned Metallica T-shirt or that cocky grin that used to balance out all the hollow spaces inside of him. He was angry at himself for perpetuating the disconnect with reality. Maybe he really did have a mental break.

It wasn’t as though he hadn’t been warned.

“I don’t blame you for not talking to me,” Jack’s voice continued. “Kinda wish you’d look at me, but…guess I deserve the cold shoulder.”

Even in his head, Jack’s voice sounded somewhat thin and apologetic—hesitant and hopeful at once. Mac took a slow breath, the stitch in his side stabbing up to his heart and sending his pulse off-beat again. He pressed his hand against the fractured ribs, then rolled his neck, trying to loosen the muscles there and ease the ache building behind his eyes.

Used to be seeing the sky worked wonders for his balance. It was one of the reasons he loved being out on this deck so much after missions. It gave him the sense that the world was much bigger than whatever impossible situation they’d just survived. There was more out there.

More than just him.

“I was going to say we need to talk, but doesn’t seem like you’re a big fan of that right now,” Jack’s voice seemed to move closer, and Mac closed his eyes, feeling dizzy with the shift of sound, “so I guess I can start.”

Mac shook his head, irritated that his subconscious was trying for the easy out. “Look this isn’t something that can be fixed with a…a movie line and a promise.”

“I know,” Jack’s voice replied.

Mac huffed in disbelief. His brain really was something else these days. “Oh, you know, huh?”

He opened his eyes, leaning his hands against the ledge framing the end of the deck, and letting his head hang low, stretching his tight neck muscles.

“You don’t know shit. Jack destroyed his most important promise,” he snapped out to the night, not bothering to track where the voice was coming from now.

It was all in his head anyway, so what did it matter?

“I know,” Jack’s voice repeated, this time sounding…broken.

He really sounded _broken_ by that confession.

“And because of that…and, _God_ , so much more…I don’t know who to believe anymore. I can’t…even believe myself,” Mac continued softly, defeated. “I don’t know what’s right. There was a time when…when I had people I thought I could trust—I was supposed to be _able to_ trust. And…they’re all gone. Killed, or died, or…left.” He crossed an arm over his middle, eyes on the city lights once more. “I’ve never felt more alone.”

“You’re not alone, kid,” Jack’s voice tried to reassure him, this part of this subconscious apparently trying to build him up where The Other version of himself tried to tear him down.

Which also made logical sense if he let himself think about it. Which he wasn’t going to do.

“Your family has been watching out for you—watching over you,” Jack’s voice continued.

Mac sighed. “I know they try to,” he allowed. “And I love them for it…but…, I also hate it because…they weren’t there. In my head. Where a man I…a man I _killed_ confronted me. I basically tried to suffocate myself. And my mom… _my mom_ was afraid of me. Of…of the _other_ me. All of that happened and they weren’t there.”

He suddenly felt the weight of a hand on his shoulder and his eyes started to burn, memories of hugging his mom tangled with the moment he realized why she’d seemed so familiar, and then he was hugging his father and realizing that James was going to die—not in a bed from cancer, but in a sudden, violent, concussive blast and fireball.

He smacked the weight from his shoulder and turned to where the image that matched the voice in his head was standing.

“ _You_ weren’t there!” Mac shouted, suddenly not caring how crazy he looked to anyone who might be coming by because the voice wasn’t going away, and the pain wasn’t going away, and it wasn’t _fair_. “You promised—you _promised_ you’d never leave, and not only did you go, you _stayed gone_.”

Mac curled his fingers against the image of Jack’s shirtfront, the blood from his split knuckle slipping from beneath the bandage. “No word, no reason, just…dark. And my _whole fucking world_ fell apart!”

He pushed roughly against the Jack image, relishing the feel of power as the image stumbled back, hitting the wall on the side of the deck.

“I’m losing everything…and the world is going to end and I can’t…I can’t fucking stop it…like I couldn’t stop the bomb that killed Pena or save Zoe from downing or…,” he was gasping now, tears choking him once more, “save my mom or my dad or keep Jack from walking away on some mission…that was probably set up by Codex for all I know—”

Fingers suddenly gripped the back of his neck, cutting off the sea of words that seemed to be flowing endlessly from him, and a forehead was pressed against his, strong arms trying to wrangle him close, grappling with him as Mac pushed harder, his hands trembling in their grip, shoving Jack hard against the wall because just…no. _No_.

He couldn’t pretend like this.

He couldn’t allow himself to be comforted by some hallucination, some Not Jack who was murmuring he’s sorry and he’s back and that Mac is doing all the right things and Mac is good and _will_ save the world because he _doesn’t know that_. He can’t do it.

He _can’t_.

“Jack?”

Riley’s voice came at him from the dark living room and suddenly Mac froze. The hands at his neck dropped and Mac whipped his head over to see his friend step out onto the deck and he knows she’s real.

He _knows_ she is.

But she’s not looking at him. And she didn’t say his name.

She’s looking at the figure against the wall. The figure pinned there by Mac’s grip.

She’s looking…at _Jack_.

Only…she can’t be. Because Jack isn’t there. He just…imagined him. Like he’d been imagining The Other him.

Right?

Riley stepped closer and Mac could see tears on her face, shining in her eyes. His hands felt numb and his fingers released their grip, falling away from the shirt front. He stumbled back as Riley moved closer still.

“It’s really you?” Riley reached out a hand, and Mac watched in shock as her fingers skimmed Jack’s arm, climbing up to his shoulder.

“It’s really me,” Jack replied.

Riley huffed out a wet laugh and pulled Jack close to her, wrapping her arms around him as Mac stumbled back another step.

“I can’t believe Matty found you,” she said through her tears, her voice somewhat muffled by Jack’s shoulder. “I can’t believe you came back.”

Jack’s arms came up to wrap around her, tucking her up against him as if he wanted to put her in his pocket and keep her close. Mac felt the blood drain from his face, his legs trembling as he took another step back. Jack turned to look at him, Riley still in his arms, and Mac could see the age on him now.

His hair was still short, but now there was gray at the temples, and peppered throughout the beard that framed his jaw. Lines deepened around his eyes as he narrowed them in concern, watching as Mac continued to back up, his entire body trembling now.

Mac could feel his heart skitter and pound, the rhythm practically choking him. His knees seemed to vanish. He tipped to the side, his body unable to keep him upright, and could feel the rough surface of the deck beneath the flat of one hand. He couldn’t tear his eyes from Jack, gaping with disbelief as Jack released Riley, turning to face him. He stepped closer and Mac couldn’t catch his breath.

Jack reached out a hand, his mouth moving but words were beyond Mac at this point. He couldn’t even really fathom the concept of sound. The lights from the city below began to dim and a tunnel formed around Jack and he can’t breathe…he can’t _breathe_ … _he can’t_ _breathe_ ….

His head bounced a bit as it cracked against the deck.

For several, blissful moments, there was nothing. No sensation. No sound. No pain.

But then sound returned like static on a radio, tuning in with warbled bursts of clarity and someone should really adjust the antennae because the sound quality kept fading.

And then he could hear. He could hear…but he couldn’t see.

He could sense motion and touch…but he couldn’t feel. He didn’t feel anything.

He didn’t _want to_ feel anything.

He was being moved. Lifted. His head spun with the sensation. He could hear people calling his name, but he couldn’t—he didn’t _want to_ —answer them. There was pressure from their hands on his face, at his throat, at his wrist, but it’s as if it’s all happening to someone else.

Things faded for him once more. And he floated in a quiet place once more. Not really gone, but…not really here.

Voices filtered in again and he recognized Matty. He wondered if he should try to open his eyes, but it felt like such an effort…and he didn’t have the strength. He didn’t have any strength. He just wanted to lie still…and listen.

“…our best chance to get the information we needed,” Matty was saying. “He knew the risks, and he agreed.”

“And now he’s paying the price.”

Oh, right. Jack. Everyone was in on the hallucination, apparently. He really had lost his mind.

“It’s not just the DMT, Jack,” Riley sighed. “It’s a combination of…exhaustion, concussion, and grief being a perfect cocktail.”

Mac wants to scoff at that. He doesn’t think it’s so perfect—in fact, he thinks it’s pretty fucking lousy because he _hurts_.

He hurts on a level that feels almost cellular. It’s worse than being shot or cut or burned. It’s all of them wrapped up together and it’s _everywhere_. He wants to cry and scream and stay silent forever. He wants to run away from the voices that are trying to comfort and soothe because he must have made a sound…an involuntary vocalization of his misery and there are hands on him now.

He can feel them press and stroke and he wants to turn away from them but his body weighs a thousand pounds. It's almost too much to breathe. His lungs are heavy. His bones are made of lead.

But then there’s a new voice, a different voice—one he doesn’t know.

“Need to watch his blood pressure,” the voice is saying. “I’ll hook up an IV to keep the fluids in him—and he should start sweating that shit out, but someone needs to be with him all the time.”

“I ain’t leaving,” someone claimed. Someone who sounded an awful lot like Jack.

“I mean it,” the voice stressed. “Between the drugs and the volts…he should still be in medical, but I think moving him at this stage would probably put more strain on him than is necessary.”

“Wade, we get it, man.” That was Bozer. _That_ voice Mac trusted. “He won’t be alone.”

“He needs to rest,” Wade stressed. “Like, full-on, no joke _rest_.”

“But…he’s asleep,” Bozer replied.

There was a noise that sounded like a cough and then Wade replied, “He’s hearing everything we say.”

A pause.

“Mac?”

He almost tried to open his eyes. _Almost_. A hand pressed gently against the side of his face. Familiar callouses. A familiar weight. A thumb stroked against his cheekbone in a familiar motion. And it almost broke him.

He wanted to shift away. He didn’t want to know whose hand that was.

“It’s okay, man.” Bozer. “You don’t have to do anything. We got this one.”

Mac faded. He didn’t know for how long, but the next thing he heard was Jack’s voice. He thought he was dreaming at first until he thought about shifting from his back to his side and realized it would be a very, _very_ bad idea.

“I can’t really tell you why things turned for me,” Jack said, his voice a soft murmur of sound.

They were alone, no other voices, no other breaths. Just Mac and Dream Jack. Confessing. Apologizing. Everything Mac had been wondering about, answered.

“We found Kovacs…and this time I made sure that bastard was dead,” Jack’s voice hardened for a moment. “Lost three of my team…got shot in my left arm, and they almost had to take it. But I made it through. Made it out. But then I…I couldn’t make it back.”

A chair creaked. A booted foot slid against the carpet.

“I checked in with Matty and she told me about…Charlie,” Jack cleared his throat, “and I wanted to reach out to you. I knew you’d be hurting. But I didn’t want crowd you. And when you didn’t reach out to me, I thought…maybe he doesn’t need me like he used to. Maybe…maybe you got this.” Jack exhaled slowly. “I know it was dumb. But…I was kinda…turned around, man. I wasn’t myself. Haven’t been for a long time, now. I, uh…I found a different job. I still had what was left of my team. And we…well. None of us really knew how to just… _be_ anymore.”

“We weren’t really a government sanctioned team. And we weren’t really mercenaries. Except…well, hell, yeah, we were. It was full-on Han Solo time, man. Only I realized…without a Wookie life debt, none of it really mattered. I was just…bouncing from country to country. Job to job. Saving people they paid me to save. Killing people they paid me to kill.”

A harsh breath cut through the quiet. When Jack spoke again, there were tears in the words.

“I was…empty. I didn’t want to keep going but I didn’t know how to stop. I looked ya’ll up and found out that Phoenix was done and you’d…scattered. Our family was…gone.”

Mac’s heart echoed the rough sob he heard in the voice next to him.

“I figured I needed to…hit the reset button…or die,” Jack confessed. “That was all I had left. It was one or the other, but I didn’t know how to do one, and I couldn’t seem to do the other. So,” he took a breath and cleared his throat, “I went home. Back to Texas. I got a job as a ranch hand, lived in a bunk house, kept to myself, just…hid. I was off the grid for a long time. Didn’t call nobody. Email. Text. None of it. Only way Matty found me was because the kid who delivered the feed had heard in town there was someone looking for a guy matching my description—and the way he described her, I knew.”

The chair creaked again, and Jack groaned slightly, his voice changing in elevation. Mac imagined he’d leaned forward.

“Riley told me about your dad, man. And after Charlie…after everything you’ve been through, I…,” he cleared his throat again, but it didn’t erase the emotion held prisoner in his voice. “None of it should have happened, Mac. I shoulda…I shoulda _been there_.”

He was right, Mac thought. But it did happen. It couldn’t be unlived. And he didn’t know how to move forward anymore, or what next step was the right step.

And he didn’t want to make that choice alone.

Mac faded again. And before he knew it, he was in that house again, leaning against the door frame, the bodies of people he didn’t know collapsed around him, and the air…the air was…gone.

He woke, choking on his heartbeat. Or at least that’s what it felt like. His breaths were panicked and raspy, his hands scrambling for purchase against the sweat-dampened sheets. He couldn’t open his eyes, couldn’t call out, couldn’t catch his breath, his side felt like a ragged hole was being torn his skin with each rapid breath. Someone’s fingers closed around his and a cool rag swiped his hot face.

“Easy, kiddo.”

He knew that voice; he’d been _listening_ for it.

“C’mon, you got this…just one easy breath. That’s it.”

“Holy shit. His pulse is like a jackhammer.”

“It’s panic, that’s all.”

“It’s the drugs working their way out of his system—that’s why he’s sweating so much.”

“Everyone back the hell off. _Now_.”

Too many voices…there were too many voices, too many people. Not enough air.

“Easy, it’s okay, they’re gone.”

Gone. They were gone. They weren’t going to use up all the air.

“Plenty of air, kid. You’re good, just breathe.”

A hand slid into his and he instinctively gripped back.

“Atta boy, c’mon, now, you got this. With me, okay? In…out…. There you go.”

It hurt, though. Breathing. He was so tired of hurting.

“I know, but it’s kind of important for that whole living thing.”

Right, _that_. Where he had to watch people die. Watch them leave. Watch them hurt. And not change any of it.

“Don’t…don’t lose sight of the most important instinct we got in us,” a soft plea, a gripped hand, a reminder, “survival. You just…you survive this. That’s all you gotta do.”

But it wasn’t, though. They wanted him to do so much more. Wanted him to save it all. Stop it all. And…what if he couldn’t? What if _he_ wasn’t enough?

“You have saved so many people, kid.” A hand brushed at his hair, pushing it away from his sweaty face. “You’ve changed so many lives—you make a difference to everyone you meet. You are the reason we’re all still here, Mac. Even someone beat up and broken as me. We couldn’t make it without you. Not one step.”

His heart settled then, his body relaxing into the mattress. He felt wrung out, sweat drying on his skin and pulling it taut. He groaned slightly, shifting away from the pain in his side, seeking the cold side of the pillow. He felt a cool rag at his neck, then along the side of his face.

“How about you help me?” Desi. He’d missed her voice. Her hands.

He could feel her deft touch as she carefully pulled the sweat-soaked shirt up off his bruised chest, then someone lifted him, holding his head against their shoulder as she removed it entirely. It occurred to him that he should maybe try to help—or maybe be ashamed that he lay there while they stripped away his sweaty clothes—but it felt so good to just rest here, just let them cool him down, just let someone else take control, he simply let it happen.

Whoever held him did so as sheets were changed, shifting him when needed, steadying the back of his head against their shoulder. They helped Desi slide a fresh, soft shirt over his head, then laid him back against cool, clean pillows, the hand sliding from the back of his head to press against the side of his face.

Familiar callouses. A familiar weight. A thumb stroked against his cheekbone in a familiar motion.

_Jack_.

He slept then. For a long time.

Long enough that he barely registered the moment his body became easier to control, wrapping his arms around a pillow and burrowing deep into the blankets, his mind finally hiding from the light of the world and saying hello to the night.

When he woke, he was parched and had to pee. He sat up, the pull along his side reminding him that he needed to move slowly. Pushing hesitantly to his feet, he breathed out slowly when he was able to stand and not waver. Blinking in the dusty light of his bedroom, he glanced at the clock on his nightstand. It was six in the evening. He wasn’t sure how long he’d really slept, but he did remember it being night when he dreamed that Jack was there, so maybe he’d slept through the whole day?

He scratched idly at the back of one hand, making his way to the bathroom. He turned on the light but didn’t bother looking at himself in the mirror. He wondered if he would ever be able to look at his reflection again without glancing over his own shoulder, afraid to see a twisted reflection of himself standing behind him.

As he finished up and washed his hands, he stared, puzzled, at a small bruise on the back of his hand that looked eerily like the mark of an IV port. Brushing his teeth, he pulled up the hem of his T-shirt, grimacing at the bruise on his ribs, but then rubbed the soft cotton between his fingers as he washed the toothpaste out of his mouth.

It was his MIT t-shirt.

He hadn’t worn that shirt in years. Not since Jack had left, really. He couldn’t say why, it had just…felt odd. Like he needed to put that part of his life behind him if he was going to move forward.

“I must have really been out of it,” he muttered, grabbing a pair of socks and his sneakers.

He didn’t bother changing or showering—he needed to figure out what day it was first—but he wanted to feel more…human. He groaned as he bent over to tie his shoes, the bruises still tender, and then shuffled from his room out to the kitchen, hungry for something other than soup for the first time in…well, he didn’t actually know how long.

He saw Bozer at the kitchen counter.

“Hey, man,” he greeted, wincing at the wrecked sound of his own voice.

Bozer’s head popped up and he looked at him with clear surprise.

“Hey, Mac,” Bozer greeted, “how you feeling?”

His voice was delicate, careful. As if Mac were fragile. Like a bomb.

“Hungry,” Mac answered truthfully, leaning one hand on the kitchen counter.

Bozer’s eyebrows bounced once. “Well, I’d hope so,” he said. “You’ve been asleep for two days.”

Mac gaped at him. “What?”

“Yeah, man,” Bozer flicked a towel over his shoulder like a bar tender. “The Aegis job was last Friday. Brought you home from medical that evening and…,” his eyes darted to the side. “Well, it’s Sunday night.”

“Holy shit,” Mac breathed, sitting carefully on one of the bar stools, his legs trembling. No wonder he was starving.

“Feel like some pancakes?” Bozer offered. “I can make you anything, but…you always liked my pancakes.”

“Yeah,” Mac let the side of his mouth tip up in a smile. “Pancakes sound amazing.”

“Coming right up!”

Mac scratched at the back of his hand again. “Hey, Boze…did I…,” two days would have been too long for the IV from Medical to look this fresh, “was there a medic here?”

Bozer turned to face him, his expression a tangle of worry and relief. He nodded, coming back over to lean against the counter.

“Yeah, that guy Wade—doubt you remember him.”

Mac shook his head.

“He helped us when we brought you to the lab after the Tesla house, and then…after the guards tased you, he showed up with Russ to help us get you out of there,” Bozer told him.

Mac blinked. “Wow…and he was here?” He rubbed at the back of his hand.

“Everyone was here, man,” Bozer informed him. “We took shifts—well most of us did. Just staying with you, making sure you were okay.”

“I was…that bad?” He felt instantly guilty for being such a burden.

Bozer’s smile was familiar. “I know what you’re thinking—don’t worry about it, Mac. We _wanted_ to do it—you’d have done the same for any of us.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I mean it, man,” Bozer reached out and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ve been through some shit the last few days, and making sure you got to the other side of it? We were happy to do that.”

“Thank you,” Mac said softly.

“It’s what family does, right?” Bozer smiled at him, starting to turn back toward the bowls he’d set out to start the pancakes.

Mac felt his face relax in a smile as he slid off the stool. He was about to ask where everyone else was as he turned toward the living room, but then stopped dead still. His heart slammed hard at the base of his throat.

Jack was standing in the doorway to the deck.

Mac heard a small noise of fear slip out through his clenched teeth. He’d really hoped that two days of sleeping would have gotten the DMT out of his system. What if he’d really had a mental breakdown?

“Hey, no, Mac,” Bozer’s voice slid toward him through the ringing in his ears. “You’re not hallucinating, man.”

Mac blinked, eyes darting over to where Bozer now stood next to him.

“You…you see him, too?”

Jack stepped into the living room and started to close the distance between them, and Mac couldn’t help it. He took two steps back. Jack stopped walking, his hands up.

“Mac.” Jack said his name as though it was a complete sentence, holding in one syllable everything he wanted to say.

Mac backed up another step. He could feel himself begin to shake, a soft shudder that started at his heart and slid through his whole body until his fingers trembled against his legs.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Jack said, his voice soft. “You’re okay, Mac.”

He was talking as though calming a trauma victim—which, on multiple levels, Mac realized he technically fit the description. Jack took another step forward and Mac jerked one step back, unable to tear his eyes from the other man. The black T-shirt, blue jeans uniform was familiar, but there were more lines on his face, more gray in his hair and in the beard trimming his jaw. There were scars on one arm that hadn’t been there before.

But…it was _Jack_.

The dark eyes, the set of his mouth, the way he held his hands…and Mac suddenly realized that Jack had been there, the whole time he’d slept. Or whatever the hell the last two days had been.

It had been _Jack’s_ hands at his face. It had been _Jack_ who’d held him through the panic. It had been Jack talking him through the dull ache that had threatened to suffocate him.

“Did…did you tell me that you…turned into Han Solo?” Mac stuttered, trying desperately to find the line between real and imaginary. What only he saw…and what everyone else did.

Jack kept his hands up _I come in peace_ style and a soft laugh relaxed his shoulders slightly. “Yeah, I did. You heard that, huh?”

Mac swallowed. “And…d-did you say…did you say that you…you should have been here? When my…my dad died?”

He wanted that to be true…more than anything else Jack had said in his dream, he wanted _that_ to be true.

Jack nodded, his face folding with sorrow and regret. “I shoulda been here, Mac. I shouldn’t have gone off the reservation, hiding away from everyone. I should have come back, like I promised I would. Like you needed me to.” His lips pressed together, his chin trembling slightly. “And I’m so, _so_ sorry.”

Mac didn’t move— _couldn’t_ move. He was aware that Bozer was at his side, close enough to touch. He was aware the kitchen bar was roughly one step at his back, and he had nowhere else to go. And he was aware that Jack had started to move forward once more.

He forced himself to hold still, feeling his heart shake in the cage of his body, watching as Jack closed the distance with slow, steady steps, until he was an arm length away.

“You…you see him, too, right?” Mac asked Bozer, hearing the shake of is heart in his voice. “I’m not…this isn’t…. I’m awake. Right now. Right?”

“You’re awake,” Bozer asserted. “I swear to God, look.” Mac watched as Bozer moved forward and clapped a hand on Jack’s shoulder, then curled his fingers into a fist and bounced it lightly off the other man.

With a trembling hand, Mac reached out and touched the scars on Jack’s arm, letting his fingers travel up to Jack’s shoulder, flexing his grip at the solid _real_ muscle and bone he felt there.

He huffed out a surprised laugh.

On a wet exhale, Jack reached forward and gently wrapped his hand around the back of Mac’s neck, pulling him forward until Mac felt himself wrapped in a strong embrace. At first, he held himself tense, but it was so familiar, so _real_ , that for the first time in actual years, he let himself lean into it, the effort to stand in that moment more than he could take.

Leaned into someone else. Trusted them to hold him up.

He closed his arms around Jack’s sturdy back and felt tears burn his eyes. He tried to keep them at bay, his vision blurring as they balanced on his lashes, but when the other man stepped away, Mac saw Jack’s tears and he let his fall.

“You’re real,” Mac whispered. “Right?” He glanced over at Bozer.

Bozer grinned. “He’s really here, man.”

Jack laughed. “I’m real, I promise.”

“Are you…staying?” Mac asked, not sure he wanted the answer, but needing it just the same.

Jack stepped back, leaving one hand on Mac’s shoulder as though unwilling to break the connection. “I got nowhere else to be.”

Mac swayed, lightheaded from any number of things. He felt Jack’s fingers tighten on his shoulder and Bozer’s hand at his side and took a slow breath, seeking balance inside the surrealness of this moment.

“How about you both plant yourselves down here and eat before Mac keels over,” Bozer suggested, his hand sold, warm, _real_.

Jack guided Mac to a stool and then both sat as Bozer returned to the kitchen. Mac simply watched his friend move around the stove and countertops, hands moving with practiced ease as he mixed up the pancakes. It felt impossible to be in this moment, now, and yet…perfectly normal at the same time.

“You know…,” Mac swallowed, trying to figure out the best way to say the next part out loud. “You know why I thought you were…uh, a hallucination, right?”

Jack looked over at Bozer, then down at the counter. “Yeah, I know about the dream-juice from DARPA.”

Mac nodded, rubbing his thumb along the edge of the counter, a sudden flash of his fingertips being stained blue flashing through his mind’s eye. He flattened his hands on the counter. No blue. He wondered how long break-through memories would plague him.

“So, you…you know I haven’t been all that, uh…,” he lifted a shoulder, “dependable lately.”

Jack grinned, then looked over at Mac, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Kid, you are as dependable as…as…well, as anything that can always be depended on.”

“Old Faithful,” Bozer spoke up from the stove. “The moon. The sun.”

“Yeah, okay, what he said,” Jack pointed a finger at Bozer. “This ain’t about you being _stable_ or _dependable_ ,” he said, dropping his chin and raising an eyebrow and Mac had a distinct impression he’d had a conversation with someone else about this very topic. “This has to do with your noggin getting all scrambled by a scary-assed drug and you needing some time to just get back on track.”

“Bozer found me out at Griffith Observatory and…and I had no idea,” Mac pointed out, “I had no idea I was there….”

Jack nodded. “’Cause even concussed and confused, you knew you needed to look at the sky,” the side of his mouth pulled up in a small smile when Mac nodded shakily. “It’s good to see some things never change.”

“And apparently…I forgot an entire day where I covered the lab with…like, calculations and formulas using mirrored writing and a blue Sharpie.”

“So…basically a Tuesday,” Jack shrugged.

“I’m serious, Jack,” Mac frowned.

“So am I, bud,” Jack turned to face him, the hand at his shoulder sliding up to grip the back of his neck. “I been there—not thanks to some freaky experimental drug, but…I have. I’ve been confused with no idea where I am, where I was, where I should go next. I’ve been,” he leveled his eyes on Mac, “lost.”

Mac shuddered. He couldn’t help it. ‘Lost’ was the one word he could find that defined the untethered feeling he’d not been able to overcome since the moment he hugged his father goodbye.

“You kept saying that…over and over,” Jack informed him. “You felt lost. And I…I get it.”

Mac licked his lips, watching Jack’s eyes as he talked, looking for duplicity, for the lie inside the words of comfort, and finding none.

“You remember when we got back from the sandbox?” Jack asked suddenly.

“Yeah?” Mac frowned. He hadn’t forgotten _everything_.

“Remember how tough it was to just…sleep in a bed? Eat in a restaurant filled with people?” Jack dropped his hand, resting it against his knee. “Hell, just to walk down a street without looking for an IED in every piece of trash on the sidewalk?”

Mac nodded, the sensation of hyper-vigilance climbing the back of his neck.

“We got through that, right?” Jack reminded him. “We figured out how to…to just _breathe_. How to be around people. How to—”

“Be a person again?” Mac concluded.

“Exactly!” Jack pressed his lips together and nodded. “We’ll get through this whole…Codex deal, too. We’ll figure out the next step…then the one after that.”

“We can’t let them win, Jack,” Mac said quietly. “No matter what that… _Other_ me said.”

“Bud, that other you was just your subconscious working shit out,” Jack said, smiling his thanks at Bozer when the other man handed him a mug of black coffee.

“There is some…logic to it. File 47, I mean,” Mac allowed, testing the waters. Wondering if maybe Jack was just placating him. Hoping… _needing_ him to push back.

Jack huffed. “Logic is a bastard. Don’t listen to anything that…that Spock side of you says about Codex.”

Mac blinked, tilting his head with a small smile. “I thought you were a _Star Wars_ guy.”

“I can have layers,” Jack lifted an eyebrow, sipping his coffee.

Mac saw the honey and almond milk sitting on the counter next to another mug of coffee and he looked up at Bozer. “Thanks, man.”

Bozer lifted his chin in reply, then said. “Jack’s right, Mac. We’ll figure this out. _All_ of us. Together.”

“Starting with how to turn Auntie Gwen away from the dark side,” Jack said, sipping his coffee and grabbing a fork to dig into the pancakes Bozer put in front of them.

“They told you about Gwen?” Mac asked.

Jack nodded around a mouthful of pancakes. “And about the mean red-head,” he said. “Desi had a few choice words about that one.”

“Not all of them in English,” Bozer remarked.

“I don’t…I don’t know how to…to get to her,” Mac muttered. “Gwen. I don’t…I mean, she’s…my family.”

“And you’ve lost enough family, kid,” Jack said.

Mac couldn’t hide the flinch. It wasn’t just biological family he’d lost—mother, grandfather, father. It was his _found_ family. The family he’d created around him, starting long ago with Bozer. Then Jack, Riley, Matty, Desi. At one point, he’d lost them all. He gave up, gave in and they…left.

He let them go.

But got them back. Now, with Jack sitting next to him—a little older, a little more worn, a little more scarred, but real and right—he had a chance. A _real_ chance. To not let it happen again.

“We may have to get clever, but…,” Jack continued, looking at him, his dark eyes serious, “there’s no way we’re going to let the world burn. Not on our watch.”

Bozer subtly shoved the plate of pancakes closer to Mac. Taking the hint, Mac picked up his fork and used the side of it to cut into the stack. The minute he took his first bite his hunger roared back, stronger than before, and he began to inhale the rest.

“It’s good to see you sitting here, Jack,” Bozer said, clearing his plate away. Mac couldn’t help but think his friend had selected those words carefully.

Jack picked up his mug of coffee, smiling. “It’s good to be sitting here. It’s good to… _be_.”

For a moment, Mac felt a familiar resistance tighten his muscles and wrap around his heart. But then Jack set his mug down, took a slow breath, and glanced over at him.

“And it’s good to have another chance.”

Mac smiled, the bands of tension releasing their grip. “Guess we all need another chance.”

“I hear that,” Bozer lifted his coffee mug and clinked it against Jack’s.

The planet wasn’t worth saving at the expense of lives. And maybe…just _maybe_ …they would be strong enough to stop them.

Together.

FIN.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A/N:** Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed, and I look forward to seeing you around here again sometime. Also? Some of you know I have a thing about listening to playlists while writing stories. There were a couple of songs that I couldn’t get enough of while writing this one, primarily because of the lyrics. If you’re in the mood, give them a listen:
> 
> Once by Brad Caleb Kane
> 
> Whiteout by Koethe
> 
> 7 & the Fall by Jesse Marchant
> 
> Muscle & Bone by John Joseph Brill
> 
> Bones by Koethe
> 
> Dark Maze by IBE


End file.
